Australia: call for urgent immigration centre review

from ABC:

Civil libertarians are calling for an urgent overhaul into the way immigration detention centres are run in Australia.

The calls follow an incident where Australian citizen Cornelia Rau, 39, spent 10 months in detention after Immigration Department officials determined she was an illegal immigrant.

Ms Rau, who has a mental illness, spent six months in the Women's Correctional Centre in Brisbane and four months in the Baxter detention centre in South Australia.

Australian Civil Liberties Council president Terry O'Gorman says there is obviously a problem and says it is not good enough for officials to say they tried to establish the woman's identity.

"Clearly those efforts were second best and there is something wrong with the way the system is run," he said.

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