And let us never forget which country was the template for all of the current wave of immigration detention, both in Europe, and in the US - that's right, it's good ol' Australia! We've had immigration detention since 1992 (installed, one should note, by Labor PM Paul Keating), with no limits for how long you can be detained for. We then created a new form of visa for "genuine" asylum speakers called a "temporary protection visa" - which, you might note from the name, had the basic idea that as soon as your country no longer wanted to kill you, back you go! We started outsourcing our detention centres to other pacific islands like Nauru, all the better to stop folks from turning up and protesting at the detention centres!
It's important to note that it wasn't until 2023 that our courts agreed that detaining a non-citizen indefinitely when there is no real prospect of removal is unlawful, and those who were in long-term detention were finally released. We still have immigration detention in Australia, we just set a time limit on how long they can stay in detention. Guess who still has some of the longest immigration detention periods in the world?