Another two men from the NZYQ-affected cohort have been deported to Nauru in a process human rights advocates say is shrouded in secrecy.
Sources told Guardian Australia a Sudanese national, who was detained in the Yongah Hill centre just outside of Perth, and another man held in a different centre were chartered to Nauru last week.
There, they join another man, believed to be a Vietnamese national, in the tiny Pacific island nation that was once home to Australia’s regional processing for asylum seekers. Just one centre remains open.
When asked about the deportation, the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said: “If people have had their visas cancelled, we expect them to leave.”
Last month, when Burke was asked how many of the 350 people in the NZYQ group had been re-detained before deportation, he said estimates – which ranged between “high teens to 20s and beyond” – were roughly correct.
The $2.5bn deal between Australia and Nauru was expected to last 30 years and would allow Australia to apply for 30-year long-term visas on behalf of the cohort to enable their deportation from the country.
About $20m of the first instalment would become immediately available for the Nauruan government to “facilitate the settlement”, while the remaining $388m would go into a sovereign trust fund, which was expected to co-governed by both the Nauruan and Australian governments.
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Ian Rintoul, a spokesperson for Refugee Action Coalition Sydney, accused the government of trying to “replace indefinite detention in Australia” with “indefinite detention on Nauru”.
“The government also seems to be trying to thwart the high court again by sending people before the high court can consider an upcoming challenge to their new deportation laws,” he said.
Ogy Simic, the advocacy head for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the deportations were happening under a veil of secrecy.
“Once again, we are all piecing together fragments of information to try to find the truth of what is being done in our name,” he said.
“And meanwhile, people are being deported in secret, locked up on a remote island and given what is essentially a life sentence with no recourse and no right to justice.”
Another human rights lawyer, Sarah Dale, the Refugee Advice and Casework Service centre director, said she was “incensed by the cloak of darkness that this process remains hidden under”.
“To not know if they were afforded due process, access to legal advice, appropriate health assessments or otherwise only echoes every single concern we have flagged with this process, let alone the repugnance of the policy itself,” she said.
Details of the agreement between Nauru and Australia remain a secret.
Officials from the Department of Home Affairs told a Senate hearing those sent to Nauru, many of whom had been found to be refugees, would be able to live freely within the community.
The agreement also apparently states they cannot be sent to another country, where they could face persecution in a situation – otherwise known as chain refoulement.
Adnan*, a man within the NZYQ cohort, told Guardian Australia last month he had not heard of Nauru prior to being re-detained earlier this year by Australian Border Force officials in a night-time raid.
“These days are like living in a nightmare. I made mistakes since I came to Australia – I have been punished for those mistakes. I have tried everything to put my life back on track.
“I am not a young man – I cannot keep rebuilding my life. I do not know why Australia has selected me for this terrible punishment,” he said.
After the deal’s announcement in February, Nauru’s president, David Adeang, said the three men first issued visas had “served their time” in Australian prisons and were no longer subject to any punishment.
“Even for the refugees that came here, they have the same history: some of them killed people, some of them are disturbed people. But they will not do that here, instead they will live their life as normal and be happy along with us all,” he said.
* Not his real name
