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The first member of the so-called NZYQ cohort has been quietly sent to Nauru, marking the start of the government's plan to deport hundreds of convicted criminals to the tiny Pacific island. Nauruan President David Adeang told his parliament on Friday that the first person had arrived under the new deal. It comes about eight months after the Australian government announced Nauru had agreed to take the hundreds of former detainees released in the wake of a landmark High Court ruling that found indefinite detention was unlawful. The new deal — which the government has repeatedly refused to release publicly — is separate to a pre-existing and ongoing arrangement for Nauru to run Australia's offshore processing regime. "Nauru confirmed last Friday that the first transfer has occurred," Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told the ABC on Tuesday. NZYQ cohort's visas cancelled Around 358 former detainees have been released into the Australian community since the High Court ruling in 2023, the bulk of whom have been convicted of crimes and therefore had their visas cancelled on character grounds. More than a dozen have since been re-detained in Australia after being issued visas by Nauru, but deportations have been delayed by legal challenges. Under the deal, members of the group are expected to be granted a 30-year visa that allows them to live and work in the community among Nauru's 12,000 or so residents, and to leave and re-enter the country. Mr Burke said he has "personally" inspected the accommodation and health facilities that will be available to the deportees. But human rights lawyers, advocates, and the Greens have loudly criticised the government's deportation plan, warning it may breach Australia's human rights obligations. Payment due upon first arrival Australia agreed to pay Nauru $408 million when the first deportee arrived on the island under a memorandum of understanding signed by officials last Tuesday. That included $20 million to be paid directly to the government to cover set-up costs, and $388 million to be deposited into a long-term trust to be jointly managed by Nauru and Australia. Australia will also pay an additional yearly sum of up to $70 million depending on how many people have been transferred to the island. If the deal is upheld in full and all members of the cohort are transferred, it means Australia will end up spending more than $2.5 billion over the 30 year its lifetime — or more than $7 million per person. But the value for Nauru will be greater, as the government will be able to immediately access interest generated by the trust. In a statement last week, a Nauruan government spokesperson said the agreement reaffirmed "Nauru and Australia's shared commitment to humane, lawful, and mutually respectful management of migration and settlement". Mr Burke defended the arrangement on ABC's Insiders earlier this month, highlighting that members of the NZYQ cohort have no right to remain in Australia given their visas had been cancelled. "Cancelling a visa has to have meaning," he said. "And until we landed this agreement with Nauru … we had a situation where for some people, no matter what laws they'd broken, cancelling a visa was meaningless." The deal is the government's latest attempt to deal with the cohort after it was found scrambling for a solution in the wake of the High Court ruling which centred on the case of one man known only as NZYQ. Previous approaches included attempts to monitor the cohort using ankle bracelets and curfews, but that too had to be reworked when the High Court ruled the cohort could not be treated putatively.
