Huyen Tran, who arrived on a boat while fleeing religious persecution, says she could be killed if deported

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A Vietnamese asylum seeker faces an anxious wait to learn if a Melbourne judge will support her proposed deportation and separation from her baby daughter.

Huyen Tran, 29, arrived in Australia on a boat in 2011 after fleeing religious persecution in her home country. She has spent almost a year in detention and, in that time, gave birth to her daughter, Isabella, who is six months old.

“If I would be deported to Vietnam I could be sent to jail or even killed,” Tran said through an interpreter in Melbourne’s federal circuit court on Monday. “I don’t want that to happen because if I was killed my daughter wouldn’t have a mother.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Huyen Tran’s husband, Paul Lee, outside the court. Photograph: Stefan Postles/AAP

Tran said that, as a Catholic in a communist and non-religious country, she had been targeted and was not able to speak freely.

“In the past because I just try to protect the statue of Jesus’s mother I was assaulted,” she said. “I was given a hard time and I still have a scar on my head.”

Lawyer Christopher McDermott, representing the federal home affairs minister, said there had been “no evidence” of an assault after trying to protect a state of the Virgin Mary.

Tran claimed she was a street child and a minor when she entered Australia, he said.

An assessment could find no evidence to suggest Tran would be harmed if she was returned to Vietnam, McDermott said.

Dozens of protesters rallied outside the court before the hearing in support Tran and her family.

“It’s very hard as I only see them two hours every day and, if Huyen leaves, we don’t know what will happen,” her husband, Paul Lee, said. “The worst part is they won’t even let us baptise our baby in the church because she’s not allowed out of detention.”

Judge Philip Burchardt reserved the decision for a future date.