Arbitrary Detention in Australia: A Broken System Causing Heartbreak and Costing Taxpayers

A System That Shuns Humanity—The Truth from Inside an Australian Immigration Detention Centre

A System That Shuns Humanity—The Truth from Inside an Australian Immigration Detention Centre

I am writing this from within an Australian immigration detention centre, where I have been confined for the last ten months—despite having legally won my right to remain in the country.

I’ve witnessed firsthand how this system operates, and what I’ve seen is nothing short of an ongoing tragedy. I’ve seen men who have been locked up for over 17 years, wasting away in a broken bureaucracy. I’ve witnessed men who arrived in Australia as babies—one-year-old—and are now 50, detained simply because they don’t have a passport, even though 49 out of their 50 years were spent here, in Australia, as Australians.

I’ve seen men who served sentences for driving offences—six months in prison—only to spend another year and a half in detention, effectively tripling their sentence for no good reason. This is their punishment multiplied—another injustice. I’ve seen others who served six years in prison, only for Home Affairs to begin processing their immigration status long after their release, forcing them into a legal limbo with no clear future for another two years. And all of this at the taxpayer's expense. Why did they wait six years to begin the process?

I will interview men like these—those whose lives have been torn apart by a system that prefers they remain invisible, forgotten.

Because this system? It’s not built to process people. It’s built to ignore them.

A System That Ignores Rather Than Resolves

The biggest scandal in Australia’s immigration detention system isn’t the number of people detained. It’s how easily these men and women could be freed—if only the system worked.

I know this personally because I’ve met hundreds of men who were never processed while incarcerated. Instead, they were left to languish in prisons, forgotten until their sentences ended. Then, once they were "released", they were thrown into detention—sometimes for years—while Home Affairs finally began processing their cases. Completely avoidable.

I forced the system’s hand. I fought for my immigration matter to be dealt with through the courts, pushing for an expedited decision. But my case is an anomaly. Most detainees are too terrified to challenge Home Affairs, fearing retaliation—fearing that they will make their situation worse. And they’re right to be afraid.