Drones are being used to monitor the foreigners released from immigration detention after a landmark High Court ruling.

Immigration Minister Andrew Giles revealed the surveillance tactic when he was asked why two of the detainees, who are murderers, weren’t being tracked with electronic ankle bracelets. 

“There is a quarter of a billion dollars that we’ve invested in supporting our law enforcement agencies to enforce that and that’s enabled things like using drones to keep track of these people,” he told Sky News on Thursday.

“We know where they are.”

More than 150 people have been released since the High Court last year found indefinite detention is unlawful. 

Asked why some of the people weren’t being electronically monitored, Mr Giles replied the law required “individual circumstances” to be considered.

Mr Giles has cancelled eight visas, as he considers deporting about 30 people after an appeals tribunal allowed them to stay in Australia on the grounds of a directive he himself had signed off on. 

He has been under increasing pressure, with the opposition ramping up calls for his sacking. 

But the immigration minister won’t step down.

“I’m focused on outcomes, not political arguments … relentlessly focusing day and night on ensuring that visas which need to be cancelled are cancelled,” Mr Giles said.

“I’ve got a job to do. There is so much to be done.”

Under Direction 99, Australia will “generally afford a higher level of tolerance” to non-citizens based on the length of their time spent in the country.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters pointed to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s previous commitment of a “common sense” approach to the deportation of people who had spent their entire lives in Australia.

“We do not want to see deportation of people with little or no connection to New Zealand, whose formative experiences were nearly all in Australia,” he said.

A new ministerial directive that is focused on “ensuring the protection of the community outweighs other considerations” will be released for public scrutiny as soon as it is ready, Mr Giles told the ABC.

Earlier this week, Home Affairs secretary Stephanie Foster admitted her department breached protocol by failing to brief Mr Giles about legal decisions to allow foreign criminals to remain in the country.

Mr Giles said it was “unacceptable” that he wasn’t informed of the decisions.

A New Zealand man, known as CHCY, was allowed to keep his visa by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal despite being found guilty of raping his step-daughter.

Opposition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan has repeatedly accused his counterpart of “falling asleep at the wheel” and putting Australians at risk.

Asked if he would support the new ministerial directive, he said the opposition had not been given access to it.

“We haven’t seen the directive, we don’t know when the directive will come into force – those are all questions Andrew Giles is refusing to answer,” he said.

This post was originally published on Michael West.