Homily 10.12.23 by Frank Brennan 6

The government can’t keep asylum seekers locked up unless the detention is for the purposes of processing visas or of removing failed asylum seekers from Australia. Once a failed asylum seeker with nowhere else to go is released from immigration detention, he or she should be treated in the same way as a citizen if they commit a criminal offence.

Following the High Court decision, the government has released about 150 unvisaed persons whose detention was illegal. Six of those persons have been arrested since their release because they have been charged with subsequent criminal offences. The law will take its course. The community should be protected from their wrongdoing in exactly the same way as we are protected from the alleged wrongdoing of our fellow citizens who have been previously convicted of offences, have done their time, and then been released. That’s all as it should be.

So why the outcry of this past couple of weeks? Standing up for the rights of unvisaed persons being unlawfully detained might not be popular. It requires the occasional unworldly John the Baptist figure to proclaim the need for justice and mercy.