**1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic closed borders and created unprecedented restrictions on international travel to mitigate a materialised global public health threat. Naturally, it could be assumed that the worldwide border restrictions would limit deportations too; however, this was not the case, highlighting the precarious and vulnerable nature of migration pathways both into and out of state borders by those deemed 'the crimmigrant other' (Franko 2019). When two 'threats' are faced simultaneously by states—both the material health threat and the constructed threat of criminal non-citizens—how do states act? Which 'threat' becomes prioritised? In this article, I argue that when states have continued to deport 'the crimmigrant other' in the face of a material threat that has affected the world to the extent that COVID-19 has, the securitisation of migration and deportation has clearly been weighted more heavily within a national security risk assessment and taken priority.

Many of us experienced the border closures, restrictions of movement during lockdown, as well as regulations around mask-wearing during COVID-19. At the same time, many migrants were facing deportation. In the United Kingdom, skilled workers working on COVID-19 infection control were refused the right to remain in the country and faced deportation (Townsend 2021). In the United States, immigration authorities used COVID-19 exposure as a threat to asylum seekers to coerce them into accepting deportation (Washington 2021) and US deportations to the Republic of the Marshall Islands have hit record numbers in 2020, despite border restrictions and the full fiscal year not being complete (Johnson 2020). Likewise, Australian criminal deportations for 2019/2020 are the second-highest on record, an increase from the previous two years (Home Affairs 2021a). These examples show that border restrictions and health security threats pose no

**Citation:** McNeill, Henrietta. 2021. Dealing with the 'Crimmigrant Other' in the Face of a Global Public Health Threat: A Snapshot of Deportation during COVID-19 in Australia and New Zealand. *Social Sciences* 10: 278. https://doi.org/10.3390/ socsci10080278

Academic Editor: Nigel Parton

Received: 7 June 2021 Accepted: 19 July 2021 Published: 21 July 2021

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hinderance to states that intend to remove people they consider a more significant criminal 'threat'.

Australia, New Zealand and neighbouring Pacific Island states and territories make up an area of the world which has been responsive to the health threat of COVID-19 and had comparatively few cases of community transmission. Australia managed borders and lockdowns to stop community transmission; New Zealand has appeared to have successfully eliminated community transmission for sustained periods; and many Pacific Island states never had the virus breach their secured borders. However, with such public and political attention paid to border security and migration to ensure national security when facing such a public health threat, existing issues of securitisation and crimmigration have become amplified. Boon-Kuo et al. (2020, p. 10) found that in Australia 'COVID policing has intensified existing policing practices directed towards the "usual suspects", which disrupts the notion that COVID-19 policing is directed solely towards the legitimate public health objective of preventing contagion'. By having some of the strongest border restrictions within the global context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia and New Zealand provide a fascinating microcosm of the application of crimmigration through deportation, and how these securitised approaches have been amplified when faced with a contrasting material public health threat.

This article examines the extent to which states intentionally prioritised constructed threats of convicted non-citizens over material public health threats, arguably operationalised through crimmigration mechanisms and deportation during the COVID-19 global pandemic. As Clapton (2021, p. 138) states, 'in a world of uncertainty and unknowing, unknowns can justify exceptional security actions, rather than clearly identifiable, existential threats'. This article provides an empirical discussion of the balancing of the securitisation of migration against the material threat of COVID-19, using news media reporting (newspaper articles and televised news reports) of Australian deportations and the corresponding New Zealand reception of deportees in 2020 and 2021. This is supported by governmen<sup>t</sup> documentation (reports, briefing papers, diplomatic cables, and official statistics) detailing New Zealand's own deportations in the period between March 2020 and March 2021, sourced under the Official Information Act 1982 process. Through this analysis, I consider the 'crimmigrant other' as a securitised threat to the state balanced against the material public health threat, and argue that Australia and New Zealand have prioritised the deportation of convicted non-citizens in the face of the very real harm caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
