The High Court has thrown out a claim by two asylum seekers who said they were illegally detained while their visa applications were being assessed. The case was a test of the limit of the High Court's ruling that indefinite immigration detention is not legal when there is not prospect of removal.
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00:00One of the men is from Poland, the other Vietnam, and both are seeking protection visas after
00:08a ruling in their favour.
00:10Their lawyers claimed they'd been held in immigration detention illegally because there
00:15was no prospect of their removal in the foreseeable future.
00:20The men had hoped to sue the government for damages in the federal court, but the Commonwealth
00:25moved the case to the High Court to resolve the issue of whether their detention was illegal
00:30or not.
00:31The government said the ruling on indefinite detention was confined to those detained pending
00:37removal.
00:38The court heard the two men in this case had not been detained to be removed, they were
00:44in detention while their visas were being assessed, and that was entirely within the
00:49Constitution.
00:50The High Court agreed finding the men's detention while their visas were being assessed was
00:56mandatory under the Constitution.
00:59The case is one of a string of challenges aimed at testing the limits of the High Court's
01:03ruling on indefinite immigration detention.