Australia may not take refugees in Costa Rica in U.S. deal

Feb. 22 (UPI) -- Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said the government expects the United States to accept refugees from Manus Island and Nauru or else it will not accept Central American refugees held in Costa Rica.

In late January, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said U.S. President Donald Trump agreed during a phone conversation he planned to honor the deal Australia struck with former U.S. President Barack Obama -- a deal Trump lambasted as a "bad deal."

Obama struck the deal late last year to accept a number of Indonesian refugees held at camps in Naura and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. In exchange, Australia would take in Central American refugees from Costa Rica.

Initially, Trump suggested he would seek to back away from the deal entirely. The deal could be disheveled under Trump's policies of "extreme vetting" of refugees, which could lead to the United States refusing to accept any refugees from Australia.

"We wouldn't take anyone until we had assurances that people would get off Nauru and Manus," Dutton told Sky News Australia. "One of the lessons that we've learned from past arrangements, say the Malaysia deal for example ... we accept all the people from Malaysia, not one person went from Australia. So we're not going to be sucked into that sort of a silly outcome."

Turnbull's government has been reluctant to identify the separate deals as a "people swap."

"We are seeking to resettle a number of people who came via the people-smuggling trade and have been in Nauru, in particular, with the United States but we will continue to take refugees from across the world, as we've always done," Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said after meeting with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

Australian lawmaker Dan Tehan said people could call it a "quid pro quo" deal.

"You can call it that ... what I would call it is both countries looking to help deal with genuine problems and fixing genuine problems when it comes to ensuring we can have in place proper border security but also deal with the issue of genuine refugees," Tehan said.

Dutton said the arrangement did not amount to a "a people swap deal" but said he does not "have any problem with that characterization if people want to put that."