A group of asylum seekers has been flown to Melbourne amid claims Queensland Health made federal authorities remove them from a Brisbane quarantine facility.
The men had been held at the Kangaroo Point Central Hotel and Apartments for more than a year after being brought to Australia for medical care. Prior to that they'd been in offshore detention in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
On Friday night, 19 men were abruptly moved from the hotel amid a dispute between its owners and a company that leases the property and lets out rooms to Serco.
Serco helps run immigration detention sites for the federal government.
The hotel's owners have told AAP they never gave approval for their property to be used for immigration detention.
Asylum seeker advocates say the men were initially taken from the hotel to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation (BITA) centre.
But Queensland Health later told the Australian Border Force and Serco that the men could not stay because it was a quarantine facility, the Refugee Action Coalition has claimed.
The group's spokesman Ian Rintoul says the men were woken about 4am on Monday, bussed to the airport and flown to Melbourne without any personal possessions, including clothes.
"They were very hurriedly pushed out of Kangaroo Point last Friday and they just weren't ready," Mr Rintoul told AAP.
AAP has sought comment from Queensland Health, the federal Department of Home Affairs, and Australian Border Force.
Of the 19 men removed from the hotel, 17 are now in Melbourne with the other two still at BITA, Mr Rintoul says.
Since December last year, the federal government has been quietly releasing asylum seekers brought to Australia for treatment under the short-lived medevac laws.
Those laws gave doctors more power to decide whether asylum seekers held in offshore detention could come to the mainland to access medical care.
Since late last year, more than 100 medevac detainees have been released from what the Home Affairs Department calls Alternative Places of Detention across the country.
A group of 50 medevac detainees were released from the Kangaroo Point hotel in early March but others remained there.
Asylum seeker support groups say the government has never adequately explained why the detention of people in need of medical care was required, nor has it detailed the basis on which it has freed or continued to detain people.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says the ongoing secrecy means the government can do whatever it likes with people in Australia's immigration detention system.
"There is a complete lack of transparency and accountability," the centre's director of advocacy Jana Favero told AAP on Monday.
"They can move you around the country, they can take your phone. The government is controlling the information to control the power."
Supporters say the men have now arrived at Melbourne's Park Hotel, which has been used to house other medevac detainees.
Meanwhile, asylum seeker support groups are left to wonder if they might soon be responsible for supporting the men should they be released into the community.
The government has provided only scant support for detainees released in recent months, including a few weeks of short-term accommodation.
AAP has also sought comment from Serco.
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