Most children in immigration detention in Australia will be released “in days and weeks”, department secretary Michael Pezzullo has told Senate estimates.
But 19 “difficult cases”, where one or more parents have raised security concerns with authorities, “may take months or longer”.
Senate estimates heard on Monday 126 minors were in detention in Australia. But 68 of those will be returned to Nauru to have their asylum claims processed there.
Those children have been on Nauru but were transferred to Australia because they, or a family member, required significant medical treatment.
In addition to the 126 in Australian detention, 116 children are on Nauru.
Pezzullo said there were 19 children in detention in families where there were law enforcement or other questions about a close adult relative.
“In these difficult cases work continues to resolve the barriers to community placement, where possible,” Pezzullo said.
Guardian Australia reported extensively last week on the case of Egyptian asylum seeker Sayed Abdellatif, who is in secure detention in Villawood with his children because of a conviction in a now-discredited show trial in Egypt in 1999.
All Abdellatif’s convictions for offences involving violence were thrown out by Interpol because they were found to be fictitious, and two further convictions were secured using evidence obtained by torture, according to court documents.
The government is aware of the anomalies in Abdellatif’s case, but last December, then immigration minister Scott Morrison defied departmental advice in ruling that Abdellatif and his six children could not apply for a visa.
Sayed Abdellatif, his wife and six children, the youngest four years old, are all detained at Villawood. They do not wish to be separated.
The assistant minister for immigration, Michaelia Cash, told Senate estimates the number of children in immigration detention had peaked at 1,992 under the previous Labor government in 2013.
“On any analysis, this government is the government that is committed to getting children out of detention,” she said.
An Australian Human Rights Commission report tabled in parliament this month into children into detention found the policy caused significant mental and physical illness and breached Australia’s international obligations.
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