Australia's Human Rights Commission launched an inquiry today into the detention of child immigrants, promising to shame the government if it finds children have been deprived of their rights.
There are 582 children in immigration detention centres, most in the outback of Australia, and 53 of them are unaccompanied by any family member.
Some have been in custody for more than a year.
"We cannot steal their childhood away from them," Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski told reporters.
"I really believe detention is bad for children," he said. "I believe we need to give them a fair go." Mr Ozdowski said there had been a stream of unsubstantiated allegations that children had been subject to excessive force during riots at the detention centres.
"Children, for example, are being sprayed with tear gas or manhandled, that is one allegation. Or, we were told that some children were being harrassed by other detainees," he said.
Many of the unaccompanied minors are 16 and 17-year-old males from Afghanistan's Hazara minority who fled their homeland to escape persecution by the Taliban.
"How do you send a person back to Afghanistan at the moment?" Mr Ozdowski asked.
More than 9,000 illegal immigrants, mostly from the Middle East or Afghanistan, have arrived in Australia in the past two years, largely by boat via Indonesia.