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AAP
AAP
Politics
Dominic Giannini

Crackdown on sex trafficking operations

Christine Nixon will probe how Australia's migration system is exploited for sex trafficking. (David Crosling/AAP PHOTOS) (AAP)

A former top cop will head the crackdown on sex traffickers using the migration system to exploit vulnerable foreign workers.

Former Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon will target criminal organisations abusing the system, calling allegations of sex trafficking through migration schemes "concerning".

"I am investigating for both systemic reform and discrete measures to prevent, deter and sanction individuals who seek to abuse Australia's visa system to exploit vulnerable migrants," she said.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil called the abuses "grotesque (and) some of the worst crimes imaginable".

"These cases of worker exploitation, human trafficking and organised crime have all resulted from Peter Dutton's failure to protect our borders," she said.

"Christine Nixon will help us understand how this occurred. She is as tough as nails, nothing gets past her.

"She is the ideal person to work with me to tackle the conditions that allowed these problems to fester for so long."

The review will be handed to the minister by the end of March.

An Australian Border Force task force has identified more 92 foreign nationals as persons of interest in relation to the investigation into the exploitation of the temporary visa program.

Six associates have been refused immigration clearance and three offshore visas have been cancelled, preventing their return to Australia.

ABF also spoke with almost 200 people in the sex industry, with 28 reporting concerns about human trafficking. One person was referred to the Australian Federal Police.

The action was sparked by a Nine newspapers investigation which alleged a global human trafficking ring exploited Australia's immigration system to move foreign women around the country "like cattle".

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