Australia to detain tourists who overstay visas amid immigration crackdown

Australia will begin detaining visa overstayers as part of a broader immigration crackdown, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced.

The Australian Border Force will expand its team by 100 compliance officers, who will work to detain or encourage the departure of roughly 77,000 people currently living in Australia without a valid visa, Burke said Thursday.

He said the policy was designed to reintroduce consequences for overstaying.

“Before 2015, we had a routine process in Australia for overstayers where, when people had overstayed a visa, we would bring people into detention centres … and within a few weeks they would organise their own flight and leave,” Burke announced at the National Press Club.

To aid the operation, 250 new detention beds will be created, including the possible use of a former quarantine facility in Melbourne.

He rejected comparisons to the United States’ hardline Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, saying, “This is not the sort of operation that some people have seen on TV happening in other countries.”

Burke also said the government would clamp down on “visa hopping”, a system that Canberra alleges is when foreigners who are already in Australia move from one type of temporary visa to another to extend their stay.

A new “No Further Stay” provision would prevent people arriving on tourist visas from lodging new applications once inside the country, while international students would be required to advance their qualifications when seeking a new study visa, closing off the option of jumping between courses at low-level institutions to extend their stay.

Burke said separate legislation would be needed to curb a significant caseload of people making what he called “disingenuous” asylum claims to prolong their time in the country.

Rights groups pushed back, and the Human Rights Law Centre warned the change could deter exploited undocumented workers from reporting abuse.

Australia’s governing Labor Party has denied that its tightened visa rules are a response to the growing popularity of the far-right One Nation Party, which has emerged as one of the country’s most popular parties in 2026.

Australia remains one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, drawing millions of annual visitors with its beaches, wildlife and cities, while also relying heavily on international students and working-holiday visa holders as a major source of migration and economic activity.

The overstayer population has grown steadily, from about 64,000 in 2016 to more than 77,000 in 2026, even as net overseas migration has fallen.