US official says resettlement interviews will begin next month despite doubts about the scheme under Trump

The deal to resettle refugees from Australia’s offshore detention islands to the US appears to be proceeding in the early days of the Trump administration, with US officials visiting Manus Island to speak to refugees.

A US official, accompanied by Australian immigration officers, visited the detention centre on Friday – just hours before Trump’s inauguration – and told refugees that interviews for potential resettlement would begin next month.

US officials have already visited Nauru.

Sources on Manus Island have told Guardian Australia the resettlement option would only be available for detainees who have been found to be refugees (under the refugees convention). Those who have had a negative assessment on their protection claim would not be eligible for resettlement.

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The Resettlement Support Centre East Asia has been contracted by the US state department to oversee the interview process. Refugees are expected to be interviewed at least twice and the entire process is expected to take between six and 12 months.

Detainees on Nauru – where families, unaccompanied women and children, as well as single men, have been sent – were believed to be set for resettlement before those on Manus, which is for single men only. Both detention centres have been the subject of sustained criticism by the UN and other nations over systemic sexual and physical abuse of those detained, including rapes, beatings and the murder of one asylum seeker by guards; child sexual abuse; chronic rates of self-harm and suicide; dangerous levels of sustained mental illness, harsh conditions and inadequate medical treatment.

A Rohingyan refugee from Myanmar, Imran Mohammad Fazal Hoque, told Guardian Australia from Manus the men on the island were hopeful about the proposed resettlement deal but past disappointments tempered their expectations.

“It is extremely hard to believe anything in this forsaken prison, as we have always been used as pawns in political games,” he said.

“Although we have been told all of this, we will not believe anything until we see some kind of action. All we have is hope and we pray that we will be able to experience our freedom soon.”



Fazal Hoque said the men held on Manus Island were frustrated by the uncertainty about their future.

In April last year the detention centre on Manus Island was ruled “illegal and unconstitutional” by Papua New Guinea’s supreme court. However, the centre continues to operate, albeit with some minor cosmetic changes to the detention regimen, nearly 10 months later.

“It feels like we are kicked in our stomachs meanwhile we are expected to say ‘thank you’,” Fazal Hoque said. “We are tested every single day, however it is almost impossible for them to find a single mistake in us.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A notice posted inside the Manus Island detention centre advertising the US refugee resettlement program. Photograph: Supplied

Fazal Hoque said he worried for the future of those who had received ‘negative assessments’ on the refugee status claim.

“I saw men today with negative notification who became like rock, no feelings, no voice whatsoever. They were just sitting on chairs in a corner, facing the anti-climb fences. It was so excruciatingly painful for me to see how these men were being drawn into a depressed world.”

The Iranian refugee and journalist Behrouz Boochani told Guardian Australia from Manus said no one seemed certain the resettlement deal would progress.

“They have played many different kind of political game on us during the past four years,” he said. “So nobody trusts them, whatever they say. The biggest uncertainty is Trump. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection itself is also in doubt. Its seems like they themselves are not certain about many things.”

Boochani said the possible 12-month wait for resettlement had left many depressed.

“We have already been in this prison for almost four years and now it’s ... more suffering for us to spend another year [waiting to know] whether we will be accepted by America,” he said.

The vast majority of the people held in Australia’s offshore detention regime have been found to have a valid claim to refugee status because they have demonstrated a well-founded fear of persecution in their homelands and are legally owed protection.



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The latest Australian government figures show that, on Manus Island, of 859 final determinations, 669 men have been granted refugee status, while 190 have been been given negative final determinations on their claim for protection.

On Nauru, of 1,200 refugee status determinations, 983 have been positive, and 217 negative.

In the US, several high-profile Republicans and supporters of the new president have said Trump’s administration could abandon the Australian resettlement deal. Neither the president nor any members of his team have commented directly on the deal.

In September, at an international conference called by the former president Barack Obama to address global refugee flows, Australia committed to resettling refugees from camps in Costa Rica. Those central American refugees have mainly fled the countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador devastated by gang and drug violence.



Guardian Australia has contacted the Department of Immigration and Border Protection for comment as well as the office of minister Peter Dutton.