Regular visitors say Serco guards using overly sensitive detectors are making them jump through hoops or refusing them entry to see friends and family

“I’m a minister of religion for 30 years, I don’t even drink alcohol and and I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life. To be told I had traces of a drug on me was humiliating,” says Colin Elkington, a Salvation Army chaplain in Victoria.

“They said it was fentanyl – I had to look it up. I figured if I was trafficking it in they should have arrested me, or if I was under the influence they shouldn’t have let me drive home.”

Elkington is a regular visitor to detainees inside the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accomodation (Mita), an immigration detention centre run by Serco on behalf of the Australian Border Force. But earlier this year guards began drug trace testing visitors before entry, and swabs of his clothes returned a positive reading.

Elkington was denied entry to his scheduled visit with detainees, which had taken at least a week to organise.

“The guard said to me maybe you brushed against someone who had it – but that doesn’t make me either a trafficker or under the influence.”

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Elkington is not alone. Guardian Australia has spoken to others including a health worker, a former mayor, a Catholic priest and a teacher, who say they have no contact with drugs but have all tested positively for drug traces and been refused entry to visit their friends and family.

Amid increasingly onerous and arbitrary restrictions and processes, there are widespread suspicions ABF is trying to discourage visitors.

The apparently highly sensitive machines installed at Mita and other detention centres have been regularly detecting traces of the prescription drug fentanyl on the clothing of people who say they have never even heard of the drug let alone used it.

Little information is given to them at the time or after, and complaints to Serco, ABF and the ombudsman, have done little, they say.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Melbourne Immigration Transit Accomodation is run by Serco on behalf of the Australian Border Force. Photograph: Jim Wileman

Simon Pryor, a former mayor of City of Brunswick who has been visiting people in Mita every week for almost three years, says the test also found traces of fentanyl on his clothing.

He offered to take a blood or breath test but was refused.

He believes the process is “intimidatory” and designed to “make sure I don’t want visit Mita and see five people who have been locked up for five or six years or more”.

Last week a Melbourne-based teacher, who did not want to be named, visited Mita with colleagues and a student, only to be turned away after a positive test. She was given no explanation or anything in writing.

“He wrote in his book my name and ‘fentanyl’, and then basically ignored me,” she tells Guardian Australia.

“We were protesting – I don’t do drugs, I barely take Panadol … I was quite shocked. I mentioned the reading to my mother, who’s a nurse, who flipped out. I’m glad it didn’t happen in front of the student we had with us.”

The trace detectors at Mita were identified by a visitor as Ionscan 600, sold to ABF by Smiths Detection. The machines work exactly like those in airports and can detect narcotics, explosives or both. The retailer declined to say how many different substances were detectable, but said trace detectors were used in multiple settings, including courthouses, jails and parliamentary buildings.

The Ionscan can be calibrated differently by the users post-purchase, but most trace detectors are set up to register substances at around one billionth of a gram.

“The guards say all the time it could be just that you sat next to someone on the tram and it rubbed off from them,” says regular visitor Ruth McHugh-Dillon of her “distressing” positive test for fentanyl. “So the guards are telling us that it’s not necessarily testing our drug use.”

An ABF spokesman says the machines are calibrated daily and are not used if calibration isn’t completed.

The same issues have been identified overseas, prompting petitions to government and multiple academic studies.

Chilling effect

Several people say they had been told – either by guards or by other visitors – that two rejections will see them blacklisted or the information shared with security services.

Serco referred questions regarding the process on this to ABF, which did not answer.

Some visitors have taken pragmatic action, such as having a clean outfit to change into or avoiding public transport and even the centre’s bathroom, while others have cut back their visits.

Elkington’s assistant, an asylum seeker who was also a regular visitor, no longer goes.

“He’s afraid if Serco or ABF find a trace of some imaginary drug on him, then when he wants to go for his protection visa interview they’ll reject him,” says Elkington.

“Whether that’s realistic or not doesn’t matter, it’s one less person visiting these people.”

McHugh-Dillon says visitors jump through hoops to sit with their detained friends for two hours and have a cup of tea.

“They really take it on board and feel bad for us because of the effort. It puts a responsibility on them. They worry that people will stop visiting them.”

Several people were also concerned about speaking to Guardian Australia.

“Because of all this inconsistency and arbitrariness … it does make people worried about stuff like this – talking openly about the system – because it feels like they target you in the drug test,” says McHugh-Dillon.

Arbitrary, ineffective and unreliable

The ABF spokesman cites the growing number of detainees with criminal histories held under section 501, which governs mandatory visa cancellations, saying in the past visitors have attempted to bring contraband into facilities.

“ABF is firmly committed to ensuring and maintaining the good order and security of the IDN for the safety of detainees, staff and visitors to immigration detention facilities,” he says.

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But Michael Bradley, a lawyer whose firm has been investigating the issue, questions whether the tests are even lawful.

“The argument here is that if the objects [of the law] are safety, security and orderly management of the detention facility, then this particular process that they’ve instituted doesn’t actually serve any of those purposes and therefore is outside their power,” Bradley tells Guardian Australia.

“If the concern is they don’t want people who are affected by drugs, which would be legitimate, then this is a completely arbitrary, ineffective and unreliable mechanism for achieving that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Melbourne Immigration Transit Accomodation and other detention centres have been detecting traces of the prescription drug fentanyl on visitors. Photograph: Alamy

Bradley says the way the test is being used is not just ineffective but actually invalid.

“They have to communicate their refusal [of entry] in writing and give reasons for why,” he says.

McHugh-Dillon says she asked the guards to write down the name of the substance she was supposedly carrying when she failed the test in May, but they refused, claiming it was against policy.

According to visitors Guardian Australia spoke to, some of the guards appear so frustrated with the oversensitivity of the test that they have observed them deliberately avoiding contact or swab areas they know are “clean”, such as inside pockets, for regular trusted visitors.

Pryor believes these guards “know how farcical the test is”.

The ABF spokesman says officers are trained in appropriate detection methods “including identifying the most suitable items of clothing and accessories on which to undergo trace detection”.

‘How can we ramp it up this week?’

A 2017 report by the Refugee Council of Australia recommended improved drug-testing processes and a relaxation of increasingly arbitrary rules for the sake of detainees, visitors and staff.

Recent rule changes have included protocols for taking in food and gifts, going to the bathroom, or even allowable footwear.

“I imagine them all as university-educated white privileged men sitting in Canberra with a whiteboard … saying ‘how can we ramp it up this week?’” says Pryor.

Visits used to require a phone call 24 hours in advance.

Now, visits to Mita must be applied for five working days in advance. If someone wants to visit multiple people, permission to apply must be sought 10 days prior. Applications take more than half an hour and must be completed for every individual, including families with infants. This also applies to lawyers visiting clients.

Visitors can no longer bring in fresh food, and to bring in a gift such as a book, detainees must apply in writing for permission to receive it and then tell the visitor in person. The visitor can then bring the gift at a designated drop-off time which doesn’t coincide with visiting hours.

“The visit staff themselves known the system does not work and it’s truly driving them crazy too,” says refugee advocate Pamela Curr. “Border Force order it but Serco has to administer it.”

Serco referred all questions to ABF.

Sister Brigid Arthur, a nun with the Brigidine Sisters, hasn’t failed a drug test, but in 18 years of visiting asylum seekers and others in immigration detention she says current restrictions are “definitely the worst it’s been”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sister Brigid Arthur has not failed a drug test but accuses Australian Border Force of verging on paranoia about security. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

“I’ve kind of given up on it, and just apply to visit one person,” she says.

“It’s Border Force being absolutely to the point of paranoia about security, or they want it to look good on paper, or I don’t know what. In practice it’s just making life harder.”

The result is fewer people getting visitors, and in Arthur’s estimate, probably many people who now don’t see anyone at all.

The ABF spokesman says they recognise “visitors are important for their positive impact on detainees, and such visits help them keep connected to the community”. ABF did not specifically address concerns that it was trying to discourage visits.

Elkington says their behaviour suggests “they don’t want us to see the detainees; we give them hope and let them know there are people out here who care.”

“I’ve known one detainee who got so depressed and sick that he went back to Iran. People will feel so forsaken they’ll go back to heaven knows what.”



