25 May 05
Herald Sun

A BABY boy born in a Perth hospital on Monday took the number of children in immigration detention to 68, a human rights groups said today.

Michael Andrew Tran was born after his parents, both Vietnamese asylum seekers, were transferred under guard from the Christmas Island detention centre for the event.

His father Minh Dat and mother Hoai Thu have been in detention on remote Christmas Island since July 2003.

The co-ordinator of the group Chilout: Children out of Detention, Alannah Sherry, said there were 62 children in mainland Australia centres and six on the Pacific island of Nauru.

"The longest children (have been) in detention are those six in Nauru who are Pacific Solution victims," she said on ABC radio.

"They've been in for well over three and a half years now.

"Most of them are children of overstayers, that is, they have been picked up in the community and then been detained."

Michael Tran was born the same day as three-year-old Naomi Leong was released with her mother from Sydney's Villawood detention centre, where the child had spent her entire life.

Ms Sherry said most of the children had not been in detention for longer than a year but there were some, like Naomi Leong, who had been in detention since birth.

"On Nauru, there is a two-year-old there who's been there his whole life," she said.

"At the Port Augusta residential housing project, which is the detention centre for women and children – their husbands and dads are at Baxter – there is a three-year-old Chinese girl, baby Bonnie, who was in detention at Villawood with her mum (who's) been in detention her whole life. "She turned three just last month."