An update on the Obama-era deal to resettle asylum-seekers from Australia’s offshore detention centers

Australia has announced that by the end of 2021, it will no longer send asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea, formally ending its controversial offshore detention policy there. But Australia will continue the practice on the Pacific island of Nauru. Many of those asylum-seekers intercepted at sea had spent up to eight years in Papua New Guinea. In its waning days, the Obama administration struck a deal to resettle about 1,200 asylum-seekers from both offshore sites. Host Marco Werman gets an update on that resettlement with Ben Winsor, a native Australian based in Washington, DC, who founded the Ads Up Refugee Network to help those refugees arriving in the US from Australia’s offshore detention camps.

Sign up for our daily newsletter

Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.