Australia frees children after immigration bungle

SYDNEY - Two children released from a razor-wire detention center returned to school yesterday, four months after they were taken from their classrooms in another embarrassing bungle by Australian immigration officials.

The release of 12-year-old Ian Hwang and his 6-year-old sister Janie came a week after Australian Prime Minister John Howard apologized to two mentally ill women, one wrongfully detained and the other wrongfully deported.

The children returned to their Sydney suburban school after they were granted bridging visas and unexpectedly released with their mother from the Sydney detention center late on Wednesday.

"I'm really glad about that and I hope I never go there again," Ian Hwang said of his release.

"It was really bad, I had to go through some really bad things like where someone tried to commit suicide," he told reporters outside the school, referring to the detention center.

His little sister, dressed in a red jacket and with her hair in a ponytail, said she had missed her friends and her teachers.

The children were taken from their school classroom by two Immigration Department officials on March 8, the same day their mother was arrested for overstaying her visa.

Australia is a nation built on migrants but it has one of world's strictest policies against illegal immigrants, a policy which has helped Howard's conservative government win four straight elections.

But the policy, lately softened to allow for the release of women and children, has come under fire from rights groups. An inquiry is underway into another 200 cases of possible wrongful detention.

"What has occurred is a blight on Australia's history," said Angelo Gavrielatos, vice president of the New South Wales Teachers Federation.

The Hwangs were to have been deported to South Korea but they remained in Australia after refugee advocates won an injunction against the Immigration Department to stop their removal.

Ian Hwang arrived in Australia with his mother and father in 1998. Janie Hwang was born in Australia and their father was returned to South Korea in February.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the children had been sent to the detention center at the request of their mother.

"That's perfectly understandable. A mother's detained, she's entitled to ask for her children to be brought to her," Vanstone told reporters.

Vanstone said the mother had now been granted a bridging visa so she could live with her children in the community.

Lawyers for the Hwangs said they were considering taking action against the Immigration Department. "It appears that they only realized within the past couple of days that there had been an administrative error," lawyer Michaela Byers said.

Center-left opposition Labor called on Vanstone to resign, as it had last week after Howard last week released a scathing report which found that systemic problems in her department had led to a series of well-publicized bungles.

Australia's strict policy against illegal immigration includes detaining illegal arrivals, illegal workers and people who overstay their visas in razor-wire camps, often for years while their cases are heard.

An Amnesty International report has found that nine out of 10 unauthorized arrivals who sought asylum between July 2002 and June 2003 turned out to be genuine refugees.

- REUTERS