Frank Madafferi detained by Australian Border Force officers and taken to a Melbourne immigration detention facility

The 63-year-old has been released from jail after serving a long sentence for high-level drug trafficking but is now in line to be deported to Italy.

Melbourne mafia man Frank Madafferi has been freed from jail but immediately thrown into immigration custody.

Madafferi was released last week from medium security Loddon Prison, in central Victoria, after serving a long sentence for high-level drug trafficking.

The 63-year-old is an unlawful non-citizen and in line to be deported to his native Italy.

He was detained by Australian Border Force officers and taken to a Melbourne immigration detention facility.

Frank Madafferi is in line to be deported to his native Italy. Picture: David Crosling

Madafferi had done a 10-year stretch for his role in a 2007 ecstasy bust, in which Calabrian mafia figures imported 15 million ecstasy pills concealed in tomato tins.

He has previously been regarded as a major player in Australia’s Italian organised crime scene where he has a reputation for extreme violence.

Madafferi once boasted that “Melbourne is mine”, in a conversation about drug distribution.

Whether he gets to stay may now rest on the success or otherwise of a Supreme Court appeal over the tomato tins bust.

He has claimed his former lawyer Joe Acquaro – shot dead outside his Brunswick East gelato bar in 2016 – was secretly giving evidence about him to organised crime detectives.

Vincenzo Crupi, 74, was charged two years later over the murder.

Another leading mafia figure, Rocco Arico, is also appealing convictions which led to his jailing because of Acquaro’s role.

Arico – who became eligible for parole earlier this year – has claimed his right to a fair trial was subverted and there was a miscarriage of justice.

Madafferi dodged deportation in 2005 when Liberal Party Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone overturned a ruling that he be banished.

This was despite warrants being in place for Madafferi’s arrest in Italy and the fact he had done prison time in that country for kidnapping, mafia conspiracy, theft and offences against the person.

He came here in 1989 on a visitor’s visa, married and had four children.

Victoria Police had submitted that he was involved since arrival in blackmail, extortion and murder.

Madafferi was charged in 2009 with conspiracy to murder over a gangland contract killing plot but the charges did not make it past the committal stage.

A Department of Home Affairs spokeswoman said no comment could be made on individual cases but that non-citizens who wanted to enter or stay in Australia

needed to meet Migration Act requirements which included areas of identity, health, character and security.

“The Australian Government takes seriously its responsibility to protect the community from the risk of harm arising from non-citizens who choose to engage in criminal activity or other serious conduct of concern,” the spokeswoman said

“Where unlawful non-citizens have exhausted all administrative, procedural and legal avenues and have no lawful basis for remaining in Australia, they are expected to depart or will be removed as required by law.”