Anyone who arrives in Australia without a visa is either sent back to where they came from or is detained in one of six immigration detention facilities throughout the state, according to a government spokesman in Canberra.
Australia's Migration Act of 1958 stipulates that all non-Australians who are unlawfully in the country be detained in and/or removed from Australia as soon as practicable.
If someone arrives and applies for asylum, they will be held in a detention centre while their application is processed. Similarly, anyone who overstays their visa must be detained while they await arrangements for their supervised departure.
The time spent in detention can range from a couple of weeks to five years, said Mr Heinz Schurmann-Zeggel, head of Amnesty International's Australia-South Pacific division.
He said the number being held in detention was increasing all the time and in past months the Australian government had run out of detention spaces. As a result it had constructed prefab dwellings at a former airport.
The detention centres, which hold between 40 (Perth) and 800 people (Port Headland, Western Australia) are run by a private operator, the Australasian Correctional Services Pty Ltd. There are 4,015 detention places in all.
The standard of care provided is determined by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and, according to the federal government, meets the needs of detainees "in a culturally appropriate way".
In 1997 the United Nations Human Rights Committee found the Australian government's detention policy in breach of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The government rejected this as "totally unacceptable".
Since 1996 the Australian Human Rights Commission has been prohibited from initiating contact with immigration detainees.
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