Supporters of a Tamil asylum-seeker family will confront the immigration minister on the campaign trail in a bid to save them from deportation.

May 15, 2019

Supporters of a Tamil asylum-seeker family hope federal Immigration Minister David Coleman will intervene in the dying days of the election campaign to keep them in Australia.

Angela Fredericks and other friends of the family will travel from the tiny central Queensland town of Biloela to the minister’s marginal Sydney electorate to ask him to use his power to step in.

The family – Priya, her husband, Nadesalingam, and their Australian-born daughters Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 23 months, were popular and well integrated members of the Biloela community until they were detained.

They had lived there for four years before it was deemed they did not qualify for refugee status.

Now, after 14 months in a Melbourne detention centre, they face imminent deportation after the High Court on Tuesday denied their final legal bid to stay in Australia.

Other supporters will rally in Melbourne on Wednesday to highlight their value to the community and concerns about returning them to where Priya’s ex-fiance and five other men were burned to death before her eyes.

“We’re really fearful they could be deported any moment … so we’re just praying that if we’re in his seat of Banks and we create enough buzz he can’t ignore us,” Ms Fredericks told AAP on Wednesday.

Ms Fredericks said supporters began phoning Mr Coleman’s office on Tuesday but had not been able to speak to the minister.

Mr Coleman, whose office told AAP on Wednesday they would not comment on specific cases, holds the seat in southwest Sydney by a slim 1.4 per cent margin.

He wrested it from Labor in 2013, who had held it for 64 years.

“Banks is a very multicultural area,” Ms Fredericks said.

She said Banks local, former Socceroo Craig Foster, who campaigned to free refugee footballer Hakeem al-Araibi from a Thai prison, will help present a 189,000-signature petition calling for the family’s release to Mr Coleman’s office.

Former Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs says the minister has the power to grant a visa to someone when it’s in the public interest.

“This power is commonly exercised, and permits the government to address situations where the normal operation of the law might otherwise lead to harsh or unfair outcomes,” she said in a statement.

Tamil Refugee Council spokesman Aran Mylvaganam said Nadesalingam’s life could be in danger if he was sent back to Sri Lanka due to links to the Tamil Tiger separatist organisation.

About 400 people are expected at the Melbourne rally that also marks the 10th anniversary of the end of the Sri Lankan civil war.