FACT: School's out for summer

Deportation, Australian style:

PAUL LOCKYER: Still smarting from the Cornelia Rau affair, the Immigration Department finds itself in the middle of a new storm tonight.

Its officers are now under fire for using heavy-handed tactics to remove two students from their classes in a New South Wales school and take them to Sydney's Villawood detention centre.

In the Federal Parliament, Immigration Minister, Senator Amanda Vanstone, has been defending the removal, saying the children's parents had been staying in the country illegally.

But parents, teachers and the Federal Opposition claim the forcible removal, during school hours, was outrageous.

More on that story in the ABC PM Program. And lest you think this was an isolated incident - well, no, as we heard a few minutes later:

JAYNE-MAREE SEDGMAN: As of last Wednesday there were 93 children being held in immigration detention around Australia. But it's the most recent arrivals who are causing this new controversy.

The Vice President of the New South Wales Teachers Federation, Angelo Gavrielatos, certainly wasn't pulling any punches when it came to the actions of some immigration officials.

ANGELO GAVRIELATOS: One principal told me she felt as if the Gestapo had arrived in her school. Heavy language.

(snip)

JAYNE-MAREE SEDGMAN: Senator Vanstone says as far as she's aware, there have only been two, rather than seven children taken from Sydney schools over the past fortnight. But Labor's immigration spokesman Laurie Ferguson says he's certainly not prepared to take the Minister's word for it.

LAURIE FERGUSON: Well, I can’t be certain of who's right, but quite frankly, I've had the recent experience of asking her about the 33 people that they've released from detention over the past year who were improperly held, and she couldn't clarify, or her office couldn't clarify, the nature of those people being held. So I wouldn't be putting too much faith in her figures, quite frankly.