Although Australia accepted 13,756 refugees in 2014-15, the period for which the most recent data are available, the country’s policy of offshore-detention centers for asylum-seekers who arrive by boat has been widely criticized. Under a longstanding policy, Australia maintained two offshore facilities—one in Nauru and one in Manus, located in Papua New Guinea. The numbers themselves are relatively small—about 400 in Nauru and more than 800 in Manus, according to the most recent data—but the reportedly poor conditions at the centers, and the time that asylum-seekers spend there, coupled with deaths and reports of sexual abuse, have made them an easy target for criticism. Indeed, Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court apparently agreed, ordering the government in April 2016 to close the Manus Island center, calling the facility a violation of the migrants’ personal liberties.

My colleague J. Weston Phippen, who wrote last year about the Australian policy here, pointed out:

To be sure, it’s not that Australia has an issue with refugees––in fact, it has agreed to resettle 12,000 Syrians, atop the refugees it typically takes through its Humanitarian Programme. It granted 13,800 refugee visas between 2013 and 2014, and 20,000 between 2012 and 2013. But the arrivals by sea seem to prompt anger. … Those that are being resettled through its Humanitarian Programme, meanwhile, are registered refugees being accepted under Australia’s international obligations. The two main parties also contend that its policies deter human-smuggling.

It’s these offshore detainees—about 1,200 of them—who would be coming to the U.S. under the onetime deal struck last November, terms of which were published by the Guardian and others. Trump, who spoke to Turnbull last Friday, reportedly called it the “worst deal ever,” according to The Washington Post—though Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, on Thursday called the conversation “cordial,” but said the president was “unbelievably disappointed in the previous administration’s deal.”

Trump, the Post said, reportedly accused Turnbull of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers”—a reference to the Tsarnaev brothers whose parents came to the U.S. from Russia on a tourist visa in 2002, and applied for, and received, political asylum—and told the Australian leader that Trump was “going to get killed” politically, apparently because the refugee intake would run counter to his campaign pledges of keeping the homeland safe from those who wish to enter the U.S. posing as refugees and attacking the homeland.

After news reports of the call emerged on Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter and cast doubts on whether the U.S. would keep its word.

Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

The Australian view of the call, as well as that of Spicer’s was different.