How people-smugglers outwitted Border Force

Fast boats and drop-offs in croc-infested waters: people smugglers have pivoted to a bold new business model to deliver their human cargo to Australia.

A vessel approaching Australian waters in decades past. People-smugglers have now upgraded to much faster vessels, designed to drop asylum-seekers before fleeing at speed.

Over a decade ago, the Coalition government – led by Tony Abbott – issued a warning to the world:

“The Australian government has introduced the toughest border protection measures ever.

“The message is simple. If you come to Australia illegally by boat, there is no way you will ever make Australia home.”

In the intervening years, asylum seekers and people smugglers have tried their luck anyway.

When those boats – often rickety, repurposed fishing boats – set out on the slow journey to Australia, they’re easy for authorities to spot.

For a long time, the people-smugglers’ goal has been to reach Australian territory on Christmas Island or to be picked up by an Australian navy vessel.

When they’re intercepted by Australia’s military-led border security operation – known as Operation Sovereign Borders – the asylum seekers on board are whisked away to detention centres on Christmas Island and Nauru for processing.

The boats themselves – which are often wooden and riddled with faults – are set alight.

That’s another warning: to people smugglers, that the vessels that prop up their operations are single-use only.

And to would-be asylum seekers that their safe passage to Australia isn’t guaranteed.

People-smugglers’ new technique

But now, people smugglers have pivoted to a bold new business model: they’re using smaller, faster, and more reliable boats to bring asylum seekers to Australian shores – dropping them in treacherous and sometimes croc-infested waters – before speeding back out to international waters, where Operation Sovereign Borders doesn’t have any sway.

Paige Taylor is The Australian’s WA bureau chief. She’s been reporting on asylum seekers and border policy for decades.

“It’s a completely new technique, what we’re seeing now,” Taylor says.

“In the past, the people smugglers would put paying customers on a deliberately low-value boat. They knew that the Border Force would burn that boat once the intercept had occurred. And they instruct the crew to go towards where Border Force was.

“So they’d deliberately try to get to Christmas Island. Sometimes Ashmore Reef, sometimes Cocos Island. If the boat was coming from Sri Lanka, that’s a bit closer.

“But now what we’re seeing is boats that have apparently deliberately evaded detection.

“What I’m being told is they’re coming in really fast, they’re dropping their customers off and they’re taking off just as fast.

“One other thing I’m hearing is that the people who have been delivered to the mainland have been hiding for a couple of days before they show themselves, before they seek help. “And there’s a feeling inside Border Force that that could be a tactic as well from the smugglers. Just give us a few days to get back into international waters, reduce the possibility that this very fast, valuable boat could be taken off us.”

The latest of those arrivals happened on the weekend.

Croc-infested waters and local know-how

The group of 15 men were dropped on a remote stretch of coast in WA’s far-northern Kimberly region.

The terrain on the Mitchell Plateau is beautiful but dangerous, and the water is brimming with salt water crocs. Their tracks are regularly seen by traditional owners near the former World War II Truscott air base, where the men were first spotted.

Paige Taylor: “The air base is owned by traditional owners. They lease it to a private contractor who runs it as a commercial airstrip for the oil and gas industry.

“They bring their helicopters in and out of there, and I’ve been there. It is extremely rugged. It’s extremely hot and inhospitable. There are saltwater crocodiles everywhere.

“There are snakes everywhere. I’ll tell you what. I would not be wanting to. I would not want to walk around the bush in that area.

“Everywhere you put your feet, there’s danger.

“The traditional owners of that area, they have a really good understanding of which crocodiles patrol which beaches, which beaches might not have a crocodile patrolling at that time.

‘Their knowledge is very detailed. And they share that knowledge among themselves, of course, but also among visitors. And I think what was very concerning for them when this group arrived undetected is that they had no way of telling them what you’re in for.”

It’s believed more than 100 personnel were deployed to Truscott after the asylum seekers arrived on Friday afternoon but, as is custom, Australian Border Force hasn’t commented on it publicly.

WA Police has.

It said on Saturday evening it believed one man from the group was missing, and that a search operation was in its early stages. The police statement also acknowledged the difficulties officers faced in searching this rugged area for the missing asylum seeker.

On Sunday morning, WA police said the man had been located not too far from the air base “in relatively good condition”.

Who are the asylum seekers?

Locals and sources close to the Border Force operation at Truscott told Paige the men appeared to be of Chinese descent.

Paige Taylor: “That’s really unusual. The last time Chinese asylum seekers arrived in Australia that I know of, and that’s on the record, was in 2012.

“There was such an unusual event The Australian flew me to Darwin to talk to those people that sailed in on a yacht to Darwin Harbour, and they were Falun Gong religion.

“And they were seeking religious asylum.

“But as in all my years back and forth from Christmas Island and visiting immigration detention centres, I have never met a Chinese person who has sought asylum by boat.”

Some members of the group were removed by the Australian Border Force shortly after their arrival, and those who remained were flown to Queensland on Sunday. From there, they’ll board a plane to Nauru.

How are boats evading Border Force?

Notably absent in this flurry of activity was the very thing the Australian Border Force has been after for more than a decade: a boat.

Paige Taylor: “We know that Border Force is putting extra resources into the north. They’ve been running a lot of aerial surveillance.

“They’ve got extra staff up there. They’re talking to Aboriginal groups who are rangers who know the area really well.

“We don’t know what’s going to come of that, but there could be a partnership there. And I think, if they are able to get on top of that, then perhaps they can break this new business model.

“But it is concerning that three boats have got through at a time when there are aerial patrols. It seems to me they need more of those.”

Is Operation Sovereign Borders still working?

“When we listen to Rear-Admiral Saunders comments in The Australian last month, he seemed to be highly aware of what he needed to do and he’d already acted.

“So maybe it’s only a matter of time before the response starts to catch up with this new business model. But it is really weird, isn’t it, that at a time when the P8s are patrolling that coast, a boat has got in and out without anyone knowing.”

What is Labor doing on immigration?

Last month, home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neal did something extraordinary: she admitted the government had lost control of immigration.

It’s a monumental concession for Labor to make.

That’s because the party’s been accused of being soft on borders by the Coalition for decades now.

Opposition leader Petr Dutton says: “Well, clearly the settings that the government’s got in place aren’t sufficient. The Prime Minister is showing a lack of leadership, a lack of strengths and a weakness that is music to the ears of these people smugglers.”

Labor has historically taken a more humanitarian approach to boat arrivals – and they’ve paid dearly for it in political terms.

In the lead up to the 2007 federal election, Kevin Rudd said Australia had a moral obligation to those less fortunate.

He ended offshore detention on Nauru and Manus Island and said mandatory detention would only be enforced if the government had no other options.

Less than a decade later, that platform had been all-but abandoned.

That’s because, under Rudd and his successor, Julia Gillard, the boats returned – and asylum seekers were scammed, injured, or killed in people-smuggling operations.

The moment Australians changed their minds

One of the most memorable and distressing episodes was the crash of a boat on the rocks off Christmas Island in 2010. Horrified locals watched as the boat was dashed to pieces and 50 people drowned, including children and the elderly.

That moment changed the minds of many Australians – even those who believed asylum-seekers have a right to seek refuge could see why boat journeys should be discouraged.

Paige Taylor covered that story.

“A lot of boats had capsized, even in fair weather, because they were junk, but this was happening in front of people’s eyes,” Taylor says.

“That’s what was so jarring about it. People could actually see another human being go under the waves. It was really horrifying. And there was a child orphaned in that crash, a small boy. People lost their spouses. It was a real turning point, actually, I think for a lot of Australians. They knew about boats going under, but they’d never actually seen it.”

What is Operation Sovereign Borders?

When Labor was punted from government in 2013 – a time when illegal arrivals were a full-blown political crisis – Tony Abbott and, later, Scott Morrison, doubled down on the Coalition’s hard-line border security policies.

Morrison, then a senior minister, said: “We will be doing things differently as a new government. This is a border security operation. This is a new and genuine resolve, based on the Coalition Party’s long-standing commitment and belief in strong border protection policies. It will be a tougher approach.”

This time around, Labor hasn’t made drastic changes to border security – the problem is that the people smugglers are figuring out ways around the operations that have mostly kept them at bay for over a decade.

Friday’s arrival is the third in the last six months, with two other boats carrying dozens of Bangladeshi and Pakistani asylum seekers reaching Australian shores in November and February.

What are people-smugglers telling clients?

For some inside Labor, it’s starting to look a lot like the bad old days.

Paige Taylor: “I think the government understands that it not only has to implement Operation Sovereign Borders, which it’s doing, it has to be seen to implement it, because in this space, perception is everything.

“And smugglers love to sell a story, a completely untrue story to their clients that things are softening: ‘Oh, it’s all open again’.

“So I think the Prime Minister’s comments on Sunday show that he really understands that.

“He knows that it’s about messaging a lot of the time.

“While the government doesn’t like to talk about operations as they’re happening in Operation Sovereign Borders, what they do often do is put out a statement once a group has been sent to Nauru. We’ve seen that a couple of times now, and that’s all part of the messaging. They like to be able to tell not only the media and the Australian public, but potential clients: ‘This is not the way to get to Australia. These people are now in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on Nauru.’

What’s happening in the High Court?

This unexpected surge in asylum seeker boat arrivals is happening in the context of a broader immigration debacle.

Clare O’Neal’s concession over borders was prompted by a showdown happening in the nation’s highest court.

There, a man known only as ASF17 is fighting to stay in Australia.

The 37-year-old Iranian man is one of a group of people who’ve been held in indefinite detention for years because they’re virtually stateless.

The government says he has to go home to Iran because his application for refugee status was never granted. But he says he’ll be persecuted in his home country because of his sexuality, religious and political beliefs.

The legal action launched by ASF17 follows a decision by the High Court that this kind of indefinite detention is unlawful.

It led to the release of more than 150 detainees into the community, where a small minority used their new-found freedom to commit crimes like rape and assault.

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This is an edited transcript of our daily news podcast, The Front. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or The Australian’s app.