# Australia seals Nauru deportation deal for foreign-born criminals
Australia will pay Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals who cannot lawfully be held in detention indefinitely, according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in a deal that places a small Pacific nation at the centre of Australia’s migration and deportation policy on 2025-09-01. The arrangement follows a 2023 High Court ruling that limited Canberra’s ability to keep non-citizens in detention when they had no realistic prospect of being resettled elsewhere.
Albanese said the government needed a place for people who had “no right to be here” if they could not return home because of refoulement rules or other obligations. He did not confirm media reports that the deal could cost AU$400 million to set up and AU$70 million a year to maintain, but he did acknowledge that the full details would be released jointly by both governments.
The agreement was advanced last week when Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke visited Nauru and signed a memorandum of understanding with Nauruan President David Adeang. Adeang later said the pact included undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people with no legal right to stay in Australia and would be supported by Australian funding to strengthen Nauru’s economy. He said it would take effect when Nauru received its first transferees, who would be given long-term visas.
The political significance of the deal goes beyond the narrow number of people already identified for transfer. Australia’s Asylum Seeker Resource Center said Nauru planned to issue 280 visas to non-citizens Australia wants to deport, and warned that draft legislation due in parliament could strip fairness protections from deportation decisions under the new arrangement. The organisation’s deputy chief executive, Jana Favero, argued the legislation could eventually affect as many as 80,000 people.
The government’s policy response flows from the High Court’s NZYQ decision, which ended indefinite detention for people who failed Australia’s character test, usually because of criminal conduct, when they could not be returned to their countries of origin. The case began with a Rohingya man who had arrived by boat, later served a prison sentence and then spent time in immigration detention. The ruling freed more than 200 people from detention, and some have since committed new offences and returned to prison.
Burke’s February announcement that three violent offenders, including a convicted murderer, had been granted 30-year visas to live in Nauru showed that the idea was already being tested in practice. Their deportations have since been challenged in Australian courts.
For Canberra, the Nauru arrangement offers a political and legal release valve. For critics, it raises familiar questions about long-term exile, due process and how far governments can go when domestic court rulings collide with migration enforcement.
