Eleventh-hour high court bid to stop Australia’s secretive deal to resettle NZYQ cohort in Nauru | Australian immigration and asylum

Australia’s secretive deal to deport people among the NZYQ cohort to Nauru has been challenged in the high court in a move that could block the first removal from the country.

Legal proceedings filed Friday for a man scheduled to be deported to Nauru on Monday argued that the decision to cancel the man’s protection visa was unlawful and that he should be allowed to stay in Australia while a review of his visa continued.

The man, whom Guardian Australia is not naming, is represented by the Human Rights Law Centre. Their claim seeks urgent interim orders preventing the government from removing him to Nauru while his case is before the court.

Laura John, the centre’s associate legal director, said the government’s attempt to banish people from Australia before their visa review process was complete was “deplorable”.

“If carried out, these deportations could set a dangerous precedent for the kind of treatment refugees and migrants are subjected to, both in Australia and around the world,” she said.

If the government did not give a commitment not to remove the man, an urgent high court hearing was likely to be held over the weekend, Guardian Australia understands.

The man facing deportation is part of the NZYQ cohort, about 280 non-citizens in the Australian community who previously faced indefinite immigration detention because their visas had been cancelled on “character grounds” but who could not be removed to their home countries because they faced persecution, or because those countries refused to accept them.

In November 2023, the high court ruled it was unlawful for the government to indefinitely detain a person if there was “no real prospect” of them being removed from the country “in the reasonably foreseeable future”.

John said no one should be permanently exiled to a country that is not their home.

“Ripping people from their lives and stranding them offshore is a cruel, lifelong punishment.

“Migrants and refugees previously forcibly sent to Nauru by the Australian government have suffered violent attacks, medical neglect and widespread discrimination.”

A week ago, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said Australia had struck a deal with Nauru to remove three men he described as “violent offenders”, including one convicted of murder, to the Pacific nation as soon as possible.

“They will be put on a plane and sent to Nauru as soon as arrangements are able to be made,” Burke told reporters.

“When somebody has come and treated Australians in a way showing appalling character, their visas do get cancelled, and when their visas are cancelled, they should leave,” he said.

Burke refused to say how much the Australian government was paying Nauru or any other incentives the Pacific island nation had been offered.

The deal with Nauru is the first application of laws passed in November, giving the Australian government the power to pay third countries to accept unlawful non-citizens and allowing them to be re-detained if they refuse.

The Nauruan president, David Adeang, defended the deal with Australia, saying the three men had been imprisoned but had “served their time”.

“Australia is trying to send them back to their country but they are not wanted back home. So we accepted them.”

In addition to granting the men 30-year visas, Adeang said Nauru had demonstrated its capability to resettle migrants during its history as an offshore processing site.

But sources on Nauru say the island’s tight-knit and familial community – the nation has a population of a little evermore than 10,000 – is deeply divided by the new deal, with some raising concerns about safety and social harmony and others decrying their country’s exploitation as a “dumping ground” or a “prison island” by Australia.

Jana Favero, deputy chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, labelled the government’s effort to deport people to Nauru as “a Trump-like move … cruel, unnecessary, unfair, and a violation of human rights”.