Too Good to Be True: Australia Says It's Released All Children From Immigration Detention

Late on April 3, the federal government made an unexpected announcement: For the first time in a decade, there are no children held in Australia's mainland immigration detention centres.

It's a reveal that's been met with equal measures of elation and suspicion. Reports are now emerging that the government has simply moved some children to more "family friendly detention facilities," rather than actually freeing them.

It's also important to note that there are still about 50 children still held in Australia's offshore detention centre facility on Nauru.

An anonymous source within the Department of Immigration has revealed to Guardian Australia that this may all just be savvy bureaucratic maneuvering with family compounds in detention centres simply been reclassified as "community placements." While some restrictions have been loosened, these asylum seeker children have been technically "released" from detention without actually moving anywhere.

Meanwhile, immigration minister Peter Dutton has told reporters in Brisbane he feels "a great sense of achievement" that the last few children held in Darwin's Wickham Point detention centre have been released. "From a peak of 2,000 children in detention under Labor, today we have no children of boats in detention," he told the ABC.

When asked by ABC Radio National's Fran Kelly whether or not some families had been reclassified in order to justify the announcement that mainland detention centres no longer housed children Dutton replied that "one family, where a small number of children is involved" had been reclassified and technically remained at a detention centre. However, he qualified that their lives wouldn't be any different from someone in community detention. "We don't stop them from going to school, they don't have a guard present, they can bring friends over, they can go out," he said.

These children will still be assessed by the government, and that depending on their application outcomes some might still be forced to return to their home countries. This would include the Bangladeshi woman and her infant daughter born in Australia, who took High Court action to prevent their return to offshore detention in Nauru, according to Sky News.

Dutton also confirmed the 72 children who were the basis of an unsuccessful High Court challenge in February still faced deportation to Nauru "once their medical support has been provided."

"The government's policy hasn't changed and it won't change," the minister said. "if people have sought to come to Australia by boat then they won't settle permanently in our country."

Sunday's announcement was initially met with praise from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), who declared it "a huge victory for human rights and basic moral decency."

However, the ASRC expressed disappointment over the Guardian's revelations, saying that "while it seems most children have been moved into the actual community, a few dozen children may still remain exactly where they were, with the only change being improved conditions."

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