CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The United States has agreed to resettle an unspecified number of refugees languishing in Pacific island camps in a deal that is expected to inspire more asylum seekers to attempt to reach Australia by boat, officials said on Sunday. "The arrangements with the United States will offer the opportunity for refugees, both on Nauru and Manus, to be resettled," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told reporters in Canberra. Under Australia's tough border security laws, asylum seekers intercepted trying to reach the country by boat are sent for processing at detention camps on Papua New Guinea's Manus island and the tiny South Pacific island nation of Nauru. The resettlement deal was struck with the administration of President Barack Obama, Turnbull said, adding that he did not tell President-elect Donald Trump that the United States had agreed to the deal. Most of the asylum seekers are Muslims from the Middle East, Africa and Asia, and Trump has called for a moratorium or tight restrictions on Muslim immigration. The majority of the detainees come from the Middle East and South Asia, with Iran and Afghanistan providing the bulk of the refugees. It pays Nauru and Papua New Guinea to house boat arrivals and has been searching for countries that will resettle them, but few asylum seekers have accepted offers to resettle in Papua New Guinea or Cambodia because most hope that Australia will eventually take them in. Any refugee who refuses to go to the United States would be given a 20-year visa to stay on Nauru, an 8-square-mile atoll with a population of 10,000 people, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said. Turnbull said on Monday the first refugees to be resettled in the United States will not come before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Trump. Amnesty International last month said as many of 410 men, women and children held on Nauru are being driven to the brink as a result of treatment that amounted to "torture". However, by any measure, the refugees involved would see the US deal as far better than spending any more time in Australia's offshore detention centers. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters while visiting New Zealand on Sunday: "We in the United States have agreed to consider referrals from UNHCR on refugees now residing in Nauru and in Papua New Guinea.”

The election of Donald Trump, who has threatened to ban Muslims from entering the United States and championed anti-immigration policies, has injected uncertainty into the deal. "We anticipate that people smugglers will seek to use this agreement as a marketing opportunity to tempt vulnerable people onto these perilous sea journeys," Turnbull said, insisting that Australia's border protection policy has not changed. “We have put in place the largest and most capable maritime surveillance and response fleet Australia has ever deployed.”

Australian Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg said ships had been positioned to turn boats back to Indonesia if asylum seekers attempt to reach Australia in the hope of being sent to the U.S.

No people smuggling operation has successfully delivered asylum seekers to Australia by boat since July 2014. Turnbull announced at Obama's Leaders' Summit on Refugees in September that Australia would participate in the U.S.-led program to resettle Central American refugees from a camp in Costa Rica.
Australia and the United States reach a deal to relocate asylum seekers from Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus Island to the U.S.