Visa immigrants face shocking list of serious crimes including child abuse and domestic violence

EXCLUSIVE 

A Bangladeshi man convicted of sexual assaults last month is among a raft of visa holders walking free in the community despite facing courts over serious crimes.

The list includes a Syrian male on a protection visa who is on bail accused of multiple domestic violence offences and will not face a hearing until next year.

A Pakistani national on a student visa is also on bail after being charged with offences including intentionally recording and threatening to distribute an intimate image without consent, as well as attempted stalking and larceny.

And a Sri Lankan man who was recently granted a protection visa is behind bars after allegedly being caught with child abuse material, drugs and ammunition, but has not attempted to seek bail. 

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has been under increasing pressure to resign since the release late last year of more than 150 detainees including murderers and sex offenders. 

The High Court ruled in November it was unlawful to indefinitely detain foreign nationals if there was no prospect of them being removed from Australia.

Daily Mail Australia has now obtained a list of visa holders who have recently faced New South Wales courts and are not part of that cohort.

The 24-year-old Syrian man on the protection visa faced court in May charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm, two counts of intentionally choking a person with recklessness, three counts of common assault and one of stalk/intimidate.

All those charges are domestic violence-related and the man is also the subject of an interim apprehended violence order. 

Earlier this year the same man was sentenced to an 18-month conditional release order after pleading guilty to driving with an illicit drug in his blood.

He has previous convictions for traffic offences including driving while never having held a licence. 

The 23-year-old Bangladeshi man on the student visa was convicted in May of two counts of sexually touching another person without consent. 

A magistrate in a regional court sentenced the man to 20 months of imprisonment to be served by way of an intensive correction order.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has been under pressure to resign since the release late last year of more than 150 detainees including murderers and sex offenders. Mr Giles (left) is pictured with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese

That means he will not spend a day in jail, but must perform 250 hours of community service work.

The 21-year-old Sri Lankan man on the protection visa was pulled over by police in the state’s central west late last month and arrested after failing a roadside drug test. 

A search of his car allegedly uncovered an extensive amount of child abuse material as well as cannabis, methylamphetamine and ammunition.

He was charged with possessing and disseminating child abuse material, two counts of possessing a prohibited drug and possessing ammunition without a permit. 

The man, who had been living in Queensland before his arrest, did not apply for bail. 

A spokesman for Home Affairs said the department did not comment on individual cases.  

In the latest debacle to rock the Department of Immigration, Mr Giles has backed down on claims drones were being used to monitor detainees released after the High Court ruling. 

Having said drones were used to keep watch over the released detainees, Mr Giles later admitted the technology was not adopted for that purpose.

‘I relied on information provided by my department at the time, which has since been clarified,’ he said in a statement on Monday.

Mr Giles has also said an updated ministerial directive which allowed foreign nationals convicted of serious offences to keep their visas would come into effect within days.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal had used the controversial ‘direction 99’ to reinstate the visas of foreigners found guilty of such crimes.

Direction 99 had prioritised an offender’s ties to Australia and was put in place after concerns expressed by New Zealand that its citizens were being deported despite having no connections to their homeland. 

Mr Giles has said the reworked direction would place more emphasis on the safety of the Australian community.

‘It is clear that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s decision to reinstate these visas did not meet community expectations, and ministerial direction 99 has not been working as the government intended,’ he said on Monday.

‘The government is on track to overhaul this regime and put in place a new direction before the end of the week.’

Mr Giles said on Monday that 30 visas had been cancelled in the past week for foreign nationals with serious criminal histories.

‘Community safety is our number one priority and we will always act in the interest of Australians,’ he said.