The Department of Immigration and Citizenship yesterday confirmed that more than a dozen family groups, unaccompanied minors and single women have been resettled from the Indian Ocean territory to make way for the surge of new asylum-seekers.
That surge has pushed the island's crammed detention centre to bursting point. The centre, with a capacity of 2042, is now holding 1977 immigration detainees.
Those regarded as vulnerable, or in the final stages of immigration processing, are being fast-tracked off the island, said a senior DIAC official, who asked not to be named.
The department denied the detainee transfers meant a change in government policy, despite continued denials by the Rudd government that asylum-seekers on Christmas Island would not be transferred to the mainland because of the surge.
"As the numbers of people increase, then the number of people coming off will also increase as well," the official said.
His comments coincided with the departure yesterday of a mainland-bound department-charter flight believed to be carrying more than 100 people, although not all passengers were asylum-seekers. Last Wednesday, 39 asylum-seekers were flown off the island, 25 being going to special government-run transit accommodation in Brisbane and 14 to Melbourne
Source:theaustralian.com.au
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