Immigrants who have had their visas cancelled and are awaiting deportation, mostly for serious crimes, are being given fancy rooms in a 5-star hotel and serviced apartment building in Brisbane’s CBD.
Occupants include accused Fijian Indian childcare rapist Arvind Ajay Singh, who earlier this year spent weeks in one of the modern Meriton Suites rooms, equipped with an exercise bike, and was visited by his mother before being allowed to leave Australia while on bail and ahead of his trial.
The Adelaide Street building, described as an Alternative Place of Detention (APOD) by the Department of Home Affairs, has at least six levels reserved for immigration detention, with the Australian Border Force using a special entry and exit via the basement to avoid taking detainees through the lobby.
The facility was inspected by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) in 2023, and at the time was home to 23 male and six female immigration detainees, including one male who claimed to be “transgender”, most of whom had their visas cancelled under Section 501 of the Migration Act.
S501 allows the Immigration Minister to cancel or refuse visas on character grounds, including for serious criminal offences and security risks, and mandates cancellation for non-citizens who have served a prison sentence of 12 months or more.
The AHRC, which opposes hotel detention and believes it has a “serious and significant impact on an individual’s human rights” and causes “trauma” and mental health issues, noted that some detainees said they preferred being in the Meriton building.
“Some individuals commented that being detained at the hotel APODs was preferable to being at … the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation,” the report noted.
“They were more likely to have single occupancy rooms, be separated from people who had violent or criminal records (with a number saying that they felt safer in the hotel APODs) and were able to tell relatives that they were staying in a ‘hotel’ rather than a detention facility which reduced their humiliation and anxiety.”
But others complained about lack of access to fresh air due to windows that do not open all the way, and some said “being able to see people moving about freely in the streets highlighted their own confinement”.
According to the latest immigration detention figures from Home Affairs, as of July 31 there were 48 detainees in APODs, including 17 in Brisbane – the highest number of any city.
Immigration detention is supposed to be mandatory in Australia for all unlawful non-citizens.
Is it unclear whether the Meriton Suites units used as APODs at a cost to the taxpayer of approximately $471,500 per person per year are owned by pro-immigration billionaire and Meriton founder Harry Triguboff, whose company owns and operates most of its nearly 80,000 apartments as private rentals.
Header image: Left, Arvind Ajay Singh on his exercise bike at the hotel (A Current Affair). Right, a bedroom in one of the apartments (AHRC).
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