Updated March 22, 2017 08:37:30

The architect of the US-Australia refugee deal says the agreement for America to take refugees from Nauru and Manus Island was loosely contingent on Australia considering resettling people from Central America and Africa in exchange, although not in a one-for-one swap.

Anne Richard, speaking for the first time, said the arrangement would also require Australian authorities to work to reunite separated refugee families.

Ms Richard left her role as the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration in the US State Department just before Donald Trump's inauguration as President.

She said she put the framework together after an approach by the Australian Embassy in Washington DC.

"When the Australians first came to us my motivation was let's do this, let's make this happen, we have got to get these individuals to a better place," Ms Richard said.

"I have never been to either of these locations but my understanding is that the people there are really suffering and they are suffering in part because their situation is so open-ended.

"They don't know what is going to become of them and they don't know where they are going to live out the rest of their lives so I thought we should really make this happen.

"Others at the State Department then got involved and said, 'Well, what kind of things can we discuss with the Australians in order to affect an arrangement where everybody does a little extra from their country'."

The Australian Government is unlikely to do anything about the refugees on Manus Island who won't be resettled in the US.

The ABC has been told the Australian Government has been given a series of "sample cases" with a view to accepting up to 50 refugees from El Salvador under the deal with the United States.

The sample cases do not necessarily involve people who would ultimately be resettled in Australia but are representative of the types of cases that refugee agencies think would be a good fit.

The ABC understands that under the deal made between the Turnbull Government and former president Barack Obama, between 20 and 50 people may be resettled from a "Protection Transfer Arrangement" in Costa Rica set up to resettle refugees from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Most are fleeing gang-related violence.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would not be drawn on Ms Richard's comments today, instead emphasising the importance of Australia's bond with the US.

"We have a very close relationship between Australia and the United States," he said.

"They are our most important ally. It is a very close and engaged relationship and we support each other and help each other out in virtually every field, and so we will always be supporting each other in areas of this kind."

Australia won't accept intake unless US upholds deal

While the deal is not a "swap" in return for the United States taking refugees from Australian-run offshore detention centres, the State Department's architect of the plan says the elements are informally linked.

Those things included increasing intake of refugees from Africa as well as accepting people under the Costa Rica arrangement and doing more to reunite families, especially refugees who had been accepted into Australia but remained separated from family members who are awaiting resettlement in transit countries like Indonesia.

"The US was willing to look at taking hundreds and hundreds that were sort of under the protection of Australia, if you will, in return for Australia doing more — taking more refugees from this facility," Ms Richard said.

"It is called a protection transfer arrangement in Central America, but also trying to take more refugees from, say, Africa and also looking at families that had been split up under the Australian policy where someone might be in Australia and someone perhaps stuck in Indonesia and trying to do a little bit to reunite families."

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has said the Australian Government will not accept refugees from Central America until the US upholds its part of the deal, which Mr Trump has described as "dumb".

"We wouldn't take anyone until we had assurances that people were going to go off Nauru and Manus," Mr Dutton told Sky News in February.

Photo: The deal would see the US process Australia's refugees on Manus Island and Nauru. (AAP: Eoin Blackwell)

Details of both deals have been shrouded in secrecy, apparently in part due to Australia's reluctance to get caught up in a domestic political debate over refugee resettlement ahead of the US election.

For that reason, the Costa Rica element of the deal was announced in September, while the element involving Manus Island and Nauru was not made public until mid-November, after the election had taken place.

Elements remain classified, although the State Department is considering an application from the Senate Judiciary Committee to declassify the documents in the public interest.

Asylum seeker deals surprising, but welcomed

Until just over a month ago, Shelly Pitterman was the UNHCR Regional representative for the USA and the Caribbean — he now works for the Jewish resettlement organisation HIAS.

He said there was surprise in the humanitarian community when the deals were announced late last year, but the idea was welcomed.

"Fundamentally what motivated the US in accepting to work with another country of asylum, another relatively well-off industrialised resettlement country to take people who should normally be in Canberra or Sydney, was motivated by a burden sharing and humanitarian imperative that these are people who are living in dire circumstances that have had no option to go to Australia under current policy and that in the interests of burden sharing that the United States accepted to receive some of them," he said.

Photo: Ms Richard says the deal would be contingent on Australia taking in more refugees from Central America and Africa. (Supplied: Ian Rintoul)

The UNHCR is one of the partners to the Costa Rica arrangement.

"The understanding with Costa Rica was that these would be people definitely in need of protection coming out of the first country of asylum out of Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras and that we would be able to facilitate their access to temporary safety in Costa Rica where they would then be processed for resettlement to the US or to Canada and, now, we learned, as well, Australia so that was a most welcome announcement," he said.

He said although the number Australia was considering taking from Central America was small, it was still important.

"Of course it makes a difference. It makes a difference for the people who need help, there's no question about that," he said.

Department of Homeland Security staff are now on Nauru fingerprinting people who have expressed an interest in resettlement and will do the same on Manus Island next month.

Interviews, security and health checks will follow.

Fewer refugees to come as waiting time lengthens

There is concern, however, that Mr Trump's plans to reduce the refugee intake for 2017 from Barack Obama's planned 110,000 to 50,000 could affect the resettlement timetable for people even if their applications are approved.

Around 38,000 places have already been filled, which means that as few as 12,000 places are left under the reduced ceiling.

That could mean refugees from the Australian detention centres miss this year's cut-off.

"It means only 12,000 people will come," Mr Pitterman said.

"The people who need resettlement who are in the so-called pipeline will need to find other solutions."

Ms Richard agrees.

"It is possible that some of the refugees from those two sites would make it to the US this year, and it is also possible that not all of them will, that some of them remain and have to wait longer," she said.

However, refugee agency sources have told the ABC that they remain "optimistic" that some refugees will be resettled by the end of the US summer in late September.

Topics: world-politics, foreign-affairs, united-states

First posted March 22, 2017 06:07:34