Key Points
- More than 150 people were released from indefinite immigration detention last year after a landmark High Court ruling.
- Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has revealed some of those people are being monitored by using drones.
- Giles said electronic monitoring through ankle bracelets, spot checks and random house checks are also being used.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has revealed the government is using drones to track some immigration detainees recently released from indefinite detention.
Giles explained the use of drones in an interview with Sky News on Thursday, which is understood to be the first time the government has publicly detailed how it is monitoring the cohort.
"What's being done through our strong rules, which impose strict visa conditions on everyone in the cohort, including daily monitoring, as well as the other discretionary conditions, there is a quarter of a billion dollars that we've invested in supporting our law enforcement agencies to enforce that," Giles said.
"And that's enabled things like using drones to keep track of these people."
More than 150 people were after the High Court ruled in favour of a man known as NZYQ in November last year, many of which had serious criminal convictions.
The government to impose strict monitoring conditions on the released detainees, but laws requiring individual circumstances to be considered when requiring an individual to wear an ankle monitor means .
Asked why some of those released weren't being electronically monitored with ankle bracelets, Giles replied the law required "individual circumstances" to be considered.
He said "spot checks and random house checks" were also being used.
