Australia's highest court has ruled an indigenous man awaiting deportation to New Zealand was legally held in detention for more than 500 days - despite the deportation being dubbed illegal and not going ahead.
Brendan Thoms, 33, had his Australian residency cancelled in 2018 due to his criminal record and was facing deportation to his country of birth New Zealand - despite having few connections to NZ and being of Aboriginal descent.
After spending 501 days in detention waiting to be deported, the Australian High Court ruled in 2020 that Thoms must be treated like an Australian citizen and remain in the country.
After Thoms' release from detention, he sued the Australian government for more than $4 million.
But in a decision released on Wednesday, the High Court said Thoms' detention wasn't illegal.
Because immigration officers "had objectively reasonable grounds to suspect that he was a non-citizen who did not hold an effective visa, that was sufficient for his detention to be justified", the decision said.
Thoms was born in New Zealand to an Australian mother and Kiwi father who later gained Australian citizenship. While he had lived in Australia since the age of 6, Thoms never became an Australian citizen.
Immigration officers "considered the objective facts concerning the applicant. In particular, each observed that he was a citizen of New Zealand whose visa permitting him to remain in Australia had been cancelled," the High Court decision said.
"That was sufficient for them to have a reasonable suspicion that he was an unlawful non-citizen," said the decision.
"Accordingly… an officer was required to detain Mr Thoms because, throughout the duration of his detention, the objective facts and law at the time were such that an officer reasonably suspected him to be an unlawful non-citizen."
Thoms' lawyer Clarie Gibbs said the result was disappointing for Thoms.
"He spent more than 500 nights locked up in immigration detention," Gibbs said, as reported by 7 News. "He deserves justice and accountability for the way he was treated and the ongoing harm it has caused."
