Andrew L. Urban.
Today’s robust debate about the socio-political problems posed by Labor’s migration policies has to also reference the dark side; crime.We simultaneously argue that “Illigrants are thieves, not asylum seekers”.
Australia does not publish a national database identifying relevant offenders as an “asylum seeker”. The category can also change over time: a person may have been an asylum seeker when they committed an offence, later become a recognised refugee, or have a protection visa application refused. The following are therefore individual documented cases rather than a statistical estimate.
One clear example is YXLM, an asylum seeker held at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre. He was convicted in July 2019 of assault occasioning actual bodily harm arising from an assault on another detainee. He received an 18-month Community Correction Order. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal recorded that he had also accumulated four assault convictions between November 2016 and March 2019, as well as earlier offences.
Another case is KQBN, an asylum seeker whose protection-visa proceedings were considered by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. He was convicted of common assault in September 2017 and subsequently convicted of further offences in 2018 and 2019. The Tribunal considered whether his offending constituted a “particularly serious crime” for the purposes of the Migration Act.
There is also the case of AUK15, an Afghan Hazara refugee who had originally sought protection in Australia. He was convicted of indecent assault committed while in immigration detention. His conviction subsequently became relevant to the refusal of a humanitarian visa and his prolonged immigration detention.
RVJB is another documented case. He arrived in Australia as a child and was subsequently granted refugee status. His visa was cancelled after convictions including aggravated robbery in 2012. He was later convicted, in April 2017, of participating in a riot at the Christmas Island immigration detention centre arising from events in October 2015.
The NZYQ cohort provides a much larger group of examples. These were non-citizens released from immigration detention following the High Court’s 2023 decision concerning indefinite detention. The Department of Home Affairs subsequently disclosed that seven of the 149 people released had previously been convicted of murder or attempted murder. The same disclosure said 24 had been charged with visa-condition breaches or state offences after release.
By March 2025, the government had provided more detailed information about the criminal histories of the NZYQ cohort: 13 people had been convicted of murder or attempted murder, approximately 95 had convictions for sex-related offending, and 133 had convictions involving assault, violent offending, kidnapping or armed robbery. These people were not all necessarily asylum seekers at the time of their offending, however; the cohort consisted of non-citizens with various immigration histories.
One particularly serious case within that cohort was NZYQ himself. He was a stateless Rohingya man whose protection circumstances prevented his removal. He had been convicted in Australia of raping a 10-year-old child. His case ultimately produced the High Court’s 2023 ruling that indefinite immigration detention was unlawful where there was no realistic prospect of removal.
There are also cases involving people who committed offences while actually in immigration detention. The AAT records, for example, show repeated assaults between detainees at Villawood and Christmas Island. These are particularly useful evidence because the person’s immigration status at the time is documented rather than inferred from nationality.
Andrew,
I read this article and made a number of changes to my reply in an effort to bring my comment into a balanced view of my opinions; that said I think there is an important legal point sitting underneath the argument here which is sometimes lost in the political debate.
There is a legitimate distinction between criminal punishment and the migration consequences of criminal offending. A non-citizen who commits a serious offence is sentenced by a court according to the criminal law. The fact that the person may subsequently face visa cancellation or removal is not, in itself, an additional criminal sentence. It is a consequence arising under the migration legislation.
That distinction becomes particularly important when considering the NZYQ cohort. The High Court’s decision in NZYQ was not a finding that the Commonwealth is powerless to protect the community from a non-citizen who has committed serious offending. Rather, it concerned the constitutional limits upon executive detention where removal is not reasonably practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future.[1]
That creates a difficult legal position. Parliament can prescribe consequences for criminal conduct through the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), including visa refusal or cancellation on character grounds.[2] But the Executive cannot simply convert immigration detention into indefinite punishment because a person cannot presently be removed. The Constitution draws a line between the exercise of judicial power to punish and administrative detention for a legitimate non-punitive purpose.[3]
This is where I think the immigration debate can become misleading. Saying that a person is a non-citizen, or that removal is legally complicated, does not answer the separate question of what should happen where that person has committed serious criminal offences. Equally, invoking community protection does not remove the constitutional limits imposed on executive detention.
There is therefore a genuine legal tension here rather than a simple choice between being “tough on crime” and being “soft on immigration”. The criminal court deals with the offending; migration law deals with the person’s immigration status; and the Constitution places limits on how far the Executive can go when those two systems intersect.
That seems to me to be an important part of the discussion raised by your article, because the legal problem does not disappear simply because the underlying political debate becomes more heated.
[1] NZYQ v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2023] HCA 37; (2023) 277 CLR 145. The High Court held that detention of an unlawful non-citizen is constitutionally impermissible where there is no real prospect of removal from Australia becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future.
[2] Migration Act 1958 (Cth), particularly ss 501 and 501CA. Section 501 provides statutory mechanisms for visa refusal or cancellation on character grounds, including where the statutory definition of a “substantial criminal record” is satisfied.
[3] Chu Kheng Lim v Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs (1992) 176 CLR 1; NZYQ v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2023] HCA 37. The constitutional distinction between punitive detention and detention reasonably capable of being characterised as administrative remains fundamental to the exercise of executive power.
[4] ASF17 v Commonwealth [2024] HCA 19 further considered the operation of the NZYQ principle in circumstances involving a non-citizen’s failure to cooperate with removal.
Repeated assaults between detainees of different nationalities or ethnicities is,unfortunately, hardly surprising.