This week our bonus episode features a familiar voice: its my co-host Linah! This was one of the first interviews I conducted while in Australia and it was the beginning conversation that got us thinking about creating this podcast together. Linah has experience as an activist and organizer, they are part of the organization Whistleblowers, Activists, and Citizens Alliance (WACA), and they also are a regular detention centre visitor.

RESOURCES:

• "A refugee is a person who has fled their country of origin and is unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion." The difference between an asylum seeker and refugee (and other words important to immigration defined/explained)
• Refugee Saeed quietly deported to Iraq
• On immigrant access to lawyers in the US: "Most immigrants detained by ICE during their deportation case don't have an attorney representing them. Immigration detention is considered civil detention and, as a result, detainees do not have a right to counsel as they would in criminal cases." (http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-access-to-counsel-deportation/#)
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/sunday-review/immigrant-detainees-and-the-right-to-counsel.html
• Average Length of Detention USA: "Federal government data obtained by TRAC indicate that 70 percent of people in immigration detention are held in U.S. immigration detention for 1 month or less; in fact, many people were released the same day they were detained, indicating that ICE did not need to obtain court approval to deport these individuals.Federal government data obtained by the ILRC indicate that, on average, immigrant prisons and jails are holding people for longer periods of time under the Trump administration than under the Obama administration.  In FY 2017, the average length of stay at any one immigrant prison or jail was 34 days, compared to 22 days in FY 2016 and 21 days in FY 2015."(https://www.freedomforimmigrants.org/detention-statistics/)
• Canstruct takes over operation of Nauru Detention Centre 2017
• Hundreds of people still on the supposedly "shut down" Manus Island in 2018
• Podcast The Messenger

• Numbers of people in held detention: 1,369 with key sites being Villawood (481), Christmas Island (304), and Yongah Hill (264) 
• Average length of detention: 434 days, with 264 people having spent more than 730 days in detention
• Numbers of people held in detention because they came seeking asylum by boat: 349
• Number of children: in detention facilities: 7, in Nauru Regional Processing Centre: 22, in community detention: 180, and in the community on a bridging visa E: 3,038
• Number of people in community detention: 457, from Iran (252), stateless (52) or from Sri Lanka (42), with 299 people having spent more than 730 days in community detention
• Key nationalities of people in detention: New Zealand (191), Vietnam (119), Sri Lanka (116), and Iran (109). (https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/getfacts/statistics/aust/asylum-stats/detention-australia-statistics/)

Full Episode Transcript