Refugees arriving in Australia without papers are immediately detained once they are caught. Detention can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, depending on how long it takes the immigration department to process the case. The detention centers have been criticized for poor living conditions and abusive behavior by the guards. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock told BBC News that the location of the centers, in the Australian desert where summer temperatures get extremely hot, was a good thing because no one would try to escape.
Similar to the situation in the United States, detention centers in Australia are run by private security firms, but the immigration department claims that this does not translate into poor treatment of those detained.
INS v. St. Cyr rejected the Justice Department’s contention that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act denied judicial review in deportation cases and could be applied retroactively to immigrants who had pleaded guilty to crimes before the laws’ enactment.
Immigrant rights activists are hoping this case will open the door to more challenges on behalf of those being held in INS detention centers. Because Cuba, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam refuse to accept deportees from the U.S., immigrants from these countries remain indefinitely in detention for even minor crimes.
Later in the month, the police arrested 21 people after what the International Herald Tribune called a "race riot." Reports indicate that the conflict started when a group of white youth attacked the house of a Bangladeshi family. The Asians, in this case, are mostly Bangladeshi and Pakistani, many of whom were born and raised in England. At one point it was estimated that 2,000 young people were involved in throwing firebombs at police.
In retaliation, the U.S. congress voted to withhold money owed to the UN in back dues until the U.S. is reinstated, at least on the Human Rights Commission. The United States owes close to $825 million to the United Nations, and is refusing to pay $244 million of that amount. The United Nations is routinely strapped for cash because the United States is so far behind in dues payment. According to BBC news, anti-U.S. sentiments are due to the United States’ "increasing bias against the Palestinians in the Mid-East crisis, and a selfish head-in-the-sand stance on climate change and the environment."
