The United States could resettle zero refugees from the Australian-run immigration detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru and still be upholding the deal it has struck with Australia, according to publicly known details.

The terms of the agreement reached last November between the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and then US president Barack Obama do not commit the US to taking a single refugee, and the terms of new president Donald Trump’s executive order would appear to exclude the majority of Manus and Nauru detainees being accepted.



At the weekend, Trump signed an executive order which immediately placed wide restrictions on the travel and migration of people from seven Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – to the US even if they have a valid visa or green card.

It also included a 120-day suspension of the US refugee admissions program, and an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees. After 120 days the refugee admissions program will resume for nationals whom US intelligence authorities have said can adequately be assessed under new security procedures. Authorities can also prioritise applicants based on religion.

After a phone call with the new US president, Turnbull refused to condemn Trump’s executive order, and said the Trump White House had indicated it would “honour” the deal struck between the Australian government and the former US administration.

However, based on the available information, it appears the US could resettle zero refugees from Manus Island and Nauru and still be “honouring” the deal it has struck with Australia.

The secretary of Australia’s immigration department, Mike Pezzullo, told a Senate inquiry in November the number of refugees resettled was up to the US to determine, and there was no “numerical” commitment.

“There is, within the arrangement that we have struck, an agreement that all the persons who fall within the definition can express an interest. Then the American government will decide, once they have reviewed the cases, how many people they will take. So it is a process-driven arrangement rather than a numerical arrangement.”

John Kerry, the US secretary of state at the time the deal was struck, said America’s commitment extended to considering applications from refugees on Manus and Nauru, and the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration said it had only “agreed to consider” refugee referrals from the UNHCR.

Despite the largest group of Australia’s offshore asylum seekers being from Iran, and many others from the other banned nations, there appears to be no exception for them in Trump’s executive order.

Questions remain as to whether all those on Nauru and Manus are subject to the 120-day suspension, and whether those from the seven countries will be part of the expected tougher screening processes once the suspension is lifted.

The shadow immigration minister, Shayne Neumann, said the unanswered questions left refugees “in limbo”.

“We have Iranian refugees on Manus and Nauru, but they are currently banned from the United States,” he told Guardian Australia.

“Has the prime minister sought assurances that they will be considered outside the executive order or will they be automatically excluded because they are Iranian? While president Trump says he will honour the agreement, does his executive order overrule some refugees and has the prime minister actually asked that question?”

At the end of last year there were 866 people detained on Manus Island and 380 people living in the Nauru regional processing centre.

According to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 510 positive initial refugee assessments and 669 positive final refugee assessments have been granted on Manus Island, and 983 on Nauru, where many former detainees now live in the community.

A specific breakdown of nationalities among those determinations is unavailable, but according to the Australian parliamentary library, by far the largest group of detainees in Australia’s offshore centres are from Iran – one of the seven listed countries.

In figures from 2014 and 2015, Iranians were the dominant cohort on both Manus and Nauru. On Manus there was also a large portion from Iraq and a number from Somalia, both among the seven “countries of concern”.

Human rights groups called for Turnbull to clarify the details of his government’s resettlement deal with the US.

Graham Thom, refugee coordinator at Amnesty International Australia, said there was little clarity around how those on Nauru and Manus would be effected.

“All [Turnbull] has said is the deal is going ahead, which makes you speculate those refugees are not part of the suspension,” he said.

“But then after the four months it’s what happens to people from those countries … and whether or not by that time the US will say people from those countries can come but these additional security checks are in place.”

Thom noted that while Iranians were part of the suspensions, other nationalities were not and it wasn’t clear how that would affect resettlement times.

“That will also be devastating, if we see some nationalities going to the US quicker than others,” he said.

Thom said US refugee processing has grown increasingly rigorous and was now among the longest in the world.

“Refugees can wait two years while they’re been accepted by the US, and essentially they’re stuck becauses they’re in the US pipeline,” he said.

“It becomes very complicated … That’s one of the fears we have – even if they are lucky and are considered by the US, this could still mean they spend the next two years stuck on Manus and Nauru.”

Thom called for those on the islands to be brought to Australia in the interim, or at the very least allowed to go to other countries which might take them, such as Canada or New Zealand.

GetUp also called for them to be brought to Australia. “We need more from the government than ‘wait and see and she’ll be right’,” said Matthew Phillips, the group’s human rights campaign director.

“There must be a clear timeline for the implementation of the deal. After being detained for over three years in unsafe and abusive conditions, the prime minister must immediately evacuate the camps and offer a clear pathway to safety for nearly 2,000 men, women and children, and their families.”