When the high court handed down a judgment in 2023 finding indefinite immigration detention unlawful, Sara* received a phone call that she still remembers vividly.
“So I answer it and he basically says, Baba, I need you to come pick me up,” Sara recalls.
On the other end of the line was her father, Youssef*, who, after five years, was finally free to leave the confines of a detention centre in Australia.
“I drove down there and it was the first time that I actually saw him outside of detention or incarceration since I was very, very little,” Sara says.
The pair exchanged hugs and kisses, and that evening shared KFC – Youssef’s favourite meal – with Sara’s mother. Sara and Youssef spent the next two years making up for lost time and “bonded deeply” over their shared interest in technology and cars, including a day out to watch the Australian Grand Prix.
Youssef is one of about 350 non-citizens who make up what is referred to as the NZYQ cohort: a group of people with disparate backgrounds and family circumstances, with criminal convictions of varying severity, some with refugee status. All face potential deportation to the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru.
Sara says her family will crumble if her father is permanently sent away, while human rights lawyers and researchers warn Australia’s immigration detention policies, including last year’s secretive multibillion-dollar resettlement deal with Nauru, are causing lifelong harm to children and families left behind.
Youssef came to Australia in the 1990s, seeking protection after absconding from military service in his homeland, and was granted a permanent protection visa in 2001.
Sara describes her father as “very smart, witty and sarcastic” and credits him for teaching her algebra when she was little, and trying to teach her Arabic. But she also says he “had a bad run of it”, first injuring his back, then developing a drug addiction, and cycling in and out of jail throughout her childhood.
Over a 13-year period, while struggling with his drug habit, he was convicted of dozens of non-violent property and drug offences. He also served 10 months in prison for aggravated burglary and nine months for burglary and assault with a weapon.
His visa was eventually cancelled on character grounds and, when his last jail sentence ended in 2019, he was transferred to immigration detention.
Youssef sought to have the visa cancellation overturned by the administrative appeals tribunal and in federal court but was unsuccessful. His application to seek leave to appeal to the high court was also knocked back.
‘Hardest thing that I ever had to do’
Sara and Youssef’s reunion was short-lived.
In December 2025, after the government signed the Nauruan deal, Sara says seven armed Australian Border Force officers arrived at her mother’s home to re-detain him.
They came twice when he was not at home, so Sara offered to take him to the immigration office the next day, which she says was the “hardest thing that I ever had to do in my life”.
“Could you imagine having to drive your family member, someone that you love and care for, to a place where you know they’re never going to leave again?” she says.
She now fears her father will soon be deported, having been issued a Nauruan visa.
She says he has “gotten himself together” in the almost 10 years since his last conviction and that his re-detention “is effectively condemning us and punishing us for something that he’s already served his time for”.
The Australian government has already sent 12 non-citizens to Nauru on 30-year visas as part of the agreement signed last year, while many more await deportation.
The legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, Sanmati Verma, says deporting people such as Youssef to Nauru constitutes a “final and lifelong punishment”.
“The Australian government is snatching people from their homes, their families in the community, detaining them like Sara’s father, and deporting them to Nauru on 30-year visas that they never applied for,” she says.
“The people in Youssef’s position have not only been sentenced and served their time in relation to an offence, they’ve often spent double or triple that time in indefinite detention, which the high court has found to be punitive and unlawful.”
According to data the centre has accessed, 131 of the people in the NZYQ cohort have children who are Australian citizens and 63 have an Australian citizen partner or spouse.
Verma says the government has shown a disregard for the rights of families and children when “deciding to banish one of their parents to Nauru”.
“It’s quite basic that families belong together and this is the wrong thing that’s being done on our watch,” she says.
‘Profound and adverse impacts’
In response to questions, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, thanked the Nauruan government for offering to take people who had been stripped of their Australian visas.
“Almost everyone who is on a visa in Australia is a welcome guest,” he said.
“A very small number of people breach the nation’s trust, have their visas cancelled and have to leave. I am grateful that the government of Nauru came to Australia and offered to assist on this issue.”
The Department of Home Affairs said it would not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons.
Dr Michelle Peterie, of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at the University of Sydney, has researched the effect of detention and deportation on children and families for more than a decade. For the past three years she has been the lead researcher on a major study examining the “profound and adverse impacts” on children and young people whose parents were taken away.
Peterie says the voices of children are almost entirely absent in Australia’s highly politicised immigration debate.
“When we separate families in this way, it has rippling impacts that are felt by children and by subsequent generations, potentially for years and decades into the future,” she says.
“The harm that we are inflicting is exceptionally serious and we need to really think carefully before we tear families apart in that way.”
As part of the study conducted in collaboration with the Australian Human Rights Commission, which is due to be released this month, researchers interviewed more than 100 affected children and young people.
Peterie says the sense of loss for children was most acute in the small everyday moments, such as being picked up from school or being taught how to drive.
“These aren’t harms that disappear overnight, these are losses that shape children and young people’s education, wellbeing, careers, family planning, even their parenting for years after the deportation is enacted,” she says.
Sara fears for her father’s health on Nauru and for her mother’s ability to cope without him. She is pleading for Burke to intervene.
“My life, my dad’s life and my mum’s life are sitting in limbo,” she says.
“I’m sure … Tony Burke would do anything in his power to help his family and so I would beg him to help mine.”
* Names have been changed
