Firstly, AMSWAG would like to commend Sonya’s decision to come forward to the media. It takes incredible bravery to speak up against mistreatment by authorities. Sonya’s experiences are horrific, yet to us, unsurprising. By telling her story, Sonya is telling our stories as well.
Many AMSWAG members have been in contact with Sonya since her time at Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, prior to her deportation. On top of providing comments to the ABC, AMSWAG is releasing this statement to provide further context and analysis.
The ABF targeted Sonya because she is a transgender Asian woman on a visa travelling to Australia.
Make no mistake, this is racial and gendered profiling. This is a result of ongoing migration policies that specifically target sex workers, restricting our movements and worker mobility. This is a direct outcome of the racist Operation Inglenook that targets Asian migrant sex workers, or those assumed to be.
Operation Inglenook is a multi-agency operation led by ABF that focuses on migrant sex workers, and disproportionately targets Asian women, including trans women. ABF data shows that Operation Inglenook practice singles out Asian women based on their race and gender.
ABF cancelled Sonya’s visa after 12 hours of harassment based on an expired Locanto ad.
After being racially profiled and flagged for questioning, border officers forced Sonya to hand over her phone and searched through her luggage.
Without her consent, border officers searched through Sonya’s phone, including looking through private and intimate images, deleted text messages, and emails. The officers were able to uncover an email about an expired Locanto ad, which they then used to hold Sonya for 12 hours for coercive questioning in an airless, windowless room at the airport.
- taking turns coercing Sonya into admitting that she was a sex worker.
- threatening Sonya with immigration detention if she did not agree to be deported.
- reading out sexually explicit text exchanges to intimidate Sonya into accepting deportation.
- forcing Sonya to sign the Notice of Intention to Consider Cancellation.
- deadnaming and misgendering Sonya on all documents.
- questioning Sonya’s use of the women’s restroom.
The ABF proceeded to cancel Sonya’s visa without her signature on the notice of visa cancellation.
Immigration detention is a living hell
Once her visa was cancelled, Sonya was told by ABF officers that she would be taken to a hotel until deportation. However, Serco officers detained Sonya in a solitary area in the male section of Villawood immigration detention centre. Talking to the ABC, Sonya mentioned having hot water thrown at her by a male detainee and sexual assault in the form of pat-downs by male detention officers.
Detention officers isolated Sonya from all community support and contact with the outside world. Carrying only her phone, Sonya did not have a SIM card or adequate access to Wi-Fi. She did not have access to her luggage, her oestrogen, or any basic essential care. Cut off from contact and impossible to reach, Sonya was forcibly disappeared by the ABF and Serco.
When people have had their visas cancelled by the ABF, they are separated from their family or travel companions and are not told they can seek legal support. Their phones and computers can be taken away, and they can be indefinitely detained and deported from Australia without any form of legal review.
Immigration detention is cruel, degrading, and punitive. Transgender women in particular face disproportionate rates of transphobic harm and violence in detention, from guards, other detainees, and the system itself.
Sonya was kept in a constant state of uncertainty about how long she would be kept in detention. She requested to know her time of deportation and was constantly met with lies from border officers, saying that she would be “deported tomorrow”. It took three days until she was deported.
Detention workers often lie to detainees, telling them that they will be deported “soon”, despite there being no fixed timeline. These tactics are torturous. As seen with the Inquest into the death of Muhammad Hafizuddin Bin Zaini, the indefinite nature of immigration detention, the uncertainty of ever returning to safety, and the cruelty of having promises made and broken repeatedly push migrants to drastic measures.
The immense trauma of immigration detention leaves deep psychological wounds even when detainees are released back into the community, with no support for their recovery.
Sonya’s story is the story of many Asian migrants, trans women, and sex workers.
Sonya is one of many Asian women who have been profiled at the border, had their visas cancelled, and have been placed in immigration detention, awaiting deportation or visa outcomes under torturous, abusive, and dehumanising detention conditions.
For every woman that we are able to contact from the outside, there is an unknown number of women who suffer detention in isolation for long and uncertain periods of time, and eventual deportation.
We must continue to demand and end Operation Inglenook.
We must end racist, sexist, and transphobic profiling at the Australian border, and end the state-sanctioned torture that is immigration detention.