By Andra Jackson
The Age May 7, 2005

An Australian woman mistakenly deported to the Philippines left behind a son who is in foster care in Queensland, it has been revealed.

Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said yesterday that the woman's son, now nine, was placed in foster care four years ago after his mother, Vivian Alvarez, failed to pick him up from a Brisbane creche.

Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said he was sorry about the circumstances of the woman, who was deported in late 2001 after reportedly telling Philippines consular staff in Brisbane that she had been held as a sex slave in Queensland.

Despite being listed as a missing person in Queensland at the time, the woman was deported by Australian immigration authorities to the Philippines, where she was born.

The Federal Government is now under extreme pressure over what appears to have been systemic failures in the Immigration Department.

The Government has started a so far unsuccessful search for the woman in the Philippines in the past week.

Mr Howard told Southern Cross radio: "I am very sorry if anything unfairly has happened in relation to that (the woman's case)." "On the face of it that does appear to be the case."

Mr Howard has refused to apologise about the mistaken detention of a mentally ill Australian resident Cornelia Rau, saying he would instead await the outcome of the inquiry into her detention, headed by former federal police chief Mick Palmer.

Acting Immigration Minister Peter McGauran has referred the Alvarez case and other recently discovered cases of wrongful detention to the closed inquiry into the Rau detention.

Mr Beattie yesterday called on the Howard Government to open a judicial inquiry into the detention scandals.

He said the latest case highlighted the need for a national system of listing missing people.

The Alvarez case came to light after Ms Alvarez's family in Australia - believed to be her husband - contacted the Immigration Department two weeks ago about her whereabouts.

Mr Beattie said the woman's son was placed in foster care after she failed to pick him up from the Brisbane City Hall child-care centre on February 16, 2001. The Queensland Department of Family Services reported Vivian Alvarez as missing to police on July 17, 2001. She was listed on the Queensland missing persons register under that name and also as Vivian Wilson, her married name.

It is believed she married the Australian man in the Philippines and was fleeing domestic violence when she was struck by a car in Lismore in northern NSW.

This was some months after July 2001, said Mr Beattie.

He said she was taken to a NSW hospital where she used a different name. Hospital staff could not confirm her identity and called immigration officials who could not find any records of her arrival in Australia.

"Three days later the Department of Immigration brought her to Coolangatta and arranged for Queensland police to escort her under deportation to the Philippines. She was going under a name of which Queensland police had no record," Mr Beattie said.

Yesterday, the Philippines embassy refused to confirm a report that just before she was deported its staff had interviewed the still-injured woman in a Coolangatta motel and that she claimed to have been held as a sex slave.

Queensland police yesterday declined to say if it had investigated the woman's claims, saying the matter was being investigated by the Rau inquiry.

Phil Glendenning, from the social justice Edmund Rice Centre in Sydney, said it seemed that wrongful deportation was more likely to occur if one was non-white, had poor English, or was mentally ill.- with AAP