Raids on Visa Overstayers Won’t Resemble US ICE Raids, Minister Claims

Home affairs minister Tony Burke unveiled federal Labor’s new policy to cut down on migrant numbers in this country, during a 17 September 2026 address to the National Press Club, and the part that has caused most concern is the decision to create a new force of migrant officers to hunt down and detain up to 77,000 visa overstayers, to stick in detention centres, pending deportation.

Sound familiar? Well, Burke addressed the orange elephant in the room, when he immediately stated on announcing an expansion of Australian Border Force compliance officers by 100 additional individuals charged with enforcing the new deportation drive, that “this is not the sort of operation that some people have seen on TV happening in other countries”.

Of course, Burke is referring to the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in the United States that involve agents performing similar tasks on behalf of the Trump administration, while they’re too known for being a ragtag group of masked thugs, who not only attack undocumented migrants but any Black or Brown civilian, and they shoot white activists who resist them.

The visa overstayers Burke wants to forcibly remove from the continent could easily be described as undocumented migrants. And there is the suspicion that the foreign interference of the MAGA White House has prompted this development. Indeed, the Trump regime has revealed that it is monitoring migrant crime in Australia, and it is further, keeping an eye on anti-US propaganda in this country.

And suspicions aside, there’s no doubt that the dramatic rise in the billionaire-backed mass migration-obsessed Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party to the top of the political polls over 2026 has led to the renewed focus on migrant numbers and accompanying immigration policies that are being raised, and there is neither any question around that party’s allegiance to the Trump administration.

Slim assurances

“This is making sure that we would have an additional 100 compliance officers and we would have had an additional 250 beds,” Burke told the press club. “We already have different alternative places in detention near airports that are available, but we’re also having a look at the former quarantine facility in Melbourne to see how that might be able to be repurposed as part of this as well.”

“Effectively, what we are going back to doing is simply being able to make sure that if you overstay, you will not be able to say, ‘Well there’s no consequences, as if they’re ever going to make sure that I leave’,” the home affairs minister continued. “We need – with the integrity of the program – to make sure that we can go back simply to what we did before 2015. No more and no less.”

Burke prefaced the announcement of 100 new ABF officers and 250 more detention centre beds with the understanding that prior to 2015, the government was already running such a program, which involved ABF agents locating and removing visa overstayers. And in insisting this would not resemble overseas developments, he too cited his concerns that the proposal might be “misinterpreted”.

But even with the assurance that prior to 2015 the government did locate and deport visa overstayers without the flagrant breaches of the law that ICE employs, the fact is that the abhorrent ICE raids are operating within the borders of this nation’s closest ally, they’ve continued at apace since January 2025, and these examples will undoubtably influence a similar project down under.

On the day following his press club appearance, and in response to claims from the Australian Greens that his department’s raids will deteriorate into a repeat of US ICE operations, Burke insisted that “the Green Party know it isn’t true”, as the government is “simply going back to what Australia had done for decades until mandatory cancellation started”.

Reasons to doubt assurances

Australia has a long and notorious history of mistreating asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention. The nation has also had a predilection for letting migrants stew in indefinite detention, as well as mass deporting unlawful citizens. So, compared to a nation like New Zealand, Australia is primed for devolving into mimicry of US president Donald Trump’s deportation drive.

During the eleventh month of its drive, the Trump administration announced to allied foreign embassy staff in Washington that it would be collecting data on “migrant-related crimes and human rights abuses” in this country and other western nations, which tends to suggest that the US might intervene in Australian domestic affairs if such criminal behaviour triggers its concerns.

US secretary of state Mark Rubio then announced in March 2026 that his nation will be having its embassies in allied nations monitoring their public spheres for anti-American propaganda. This initiative has five parts: countering hostile messaging, expanding access to information, exposing adversarial behaviour, elevating the voice of US supporters and the telling of American stories.

The US is dramatically increasing its annual military spend, and it’s been calling on this nation to increase its spend from its current 2 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent. Further, Australian defence minister Richard Marles recently met with US secretary of war Pete Hegseth to discuss the ramping up of the American military presence on this continent, despite it already being substantial.

The final bold act of foreign interference on the part of the Trump administration occurred this week, when the US embassy in Australia issued a press release responding to this nation’s draft Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2026, which would regulate the internet, and it condemned the initiative as “extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online”.

Fertile ground

The demonisation of migrants has been a key rallying cry for the Trump campaign. The US president imposed a “Muslim ban” on migration from seven foreign nations in its first term. And in early 2017, Trump conducted an infamous phone conversation with then Australian PM Malcom Turnbull, in which he appeared impressed about our policy of turning back refugees who arrive by boat.

Yet, compared to western political concerns during the first Trump administration, the climate across the West in the present is imbued with a rising racism toward nonwhite migrants, which has further seen the white supremacist Unite the Kingdom movement spring up in the UK, whilst the March for Australia campaign has filled a similar void down under over the last 12 months.

This rise in a grassroots white nationalist movement in this country has, since early 2026, been accompanied by a stark shift in support for far-right party One Nation and its leader Pauline Hanson. The massive rise in support for this three-decade-old divisive minor party has further been spurred by Australian billionaires, led by mining mogul Gina Rinehart, throwing their support behind it.

So, whilst Burke has suggested that he is concerned that his plans for raids on visa overstayers will be overshadowed by fears that this might turn into our very own ICE riots, similar to what was seen in the US state of Minneapolis in early 2026, the fact is that if Labor’s immigration raids do start to imitate US counterparts, there is a growing number of constituents that will welcome such a shift.

Image: Portrait of Tony Burke by Commonwealth of Australia is licensed under CC BY 3.0 AU. US ICE raid image from Shutterstock