Last month, six major American airlines stood up to the Trump Administration and refused to transport children who had been separated from their families at US borders.1,2
But in Australia, where the government separates families all the time within its immigration regime, the national airlines refuse to do the same. And today, it's making headlines across the country.3
While Trump was tearing families apart at US borders, Peter Dutton ripped a Tamil asylum seeker away from his wife and Australian baby daughter, dragged him onto a plane and sent him back to Sri Lanka. On arrival, he was detained by security forces condemned by the UN Special Rapporteur for the "arbitrary arrest and detention" of minority communities and the "endemic and routine" use of torture.4 And as Guardian journalist Ben Doherty lamented on the day of this man's deportation, family separation is "routine" in our immigration system.5
For years now, reports of "death, disappearance, imprisonment and torture, of fear-filled lives spent in hiding, privation and despair" have filtered back to Australia about asylum seekers we wilfully deported to danger.6
