'We don't owe them': Peter Dutton vows to send Tamil family back to Sri Lanka

A Tamil family at the heart of a dramatic bid to avoid deportation must accept they are not refugees and don't deserve Australia's protection, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton says.

And it's time for Priya and her husband Nadesalingam, who came separately to Australia by boat to escape Sri Lanka's civil war, to go back, he added.

Immigration officials and a succession of courts, right up to the High Court, had not found in favour of the asylum seeker couple and their two Australian born daughters.

"I would like the family to accept that they are not refugees, they're not owed protection by our country," Mr Dutton told Nine's Today program on Friday.

A Federal Court judge granted an extended injunction on Friday morning preventing the family’s deportation until after another court hearing next Wednesday.

That came after a judge dramatically halted their deportation overnight after they were taken from immigration detention in Melbourne and bundled onto a plane which took off around 11pm Thursday.

When the plane stopped to refuel in Darwin the family was taken off the aircraft on the judge's orders.

Residents from the tight-knit community of Biloela in central Queensland, where the Tamil family has lived for several years, have been fighting to block their deportation.

The injunction, issued by Judge Heather Riley, restrains Immigration Minister David Coleman from removing the family until 12pm Friday.

Their fate will now be considered at an urgent court hearing in Melbourne on Friday morning.

Priya and Nadesalingam say they face persecution if they are sent back to Sri Lanka because of past family links to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.

But Mr Dutton says immigration authorities have spent years assessing their case, and a succession of courts, including the High Court, had not found in their favour.

There were dramatic scenes at Melbourne airport on Thursday night as supporters tried to stop their deportation.

Tamil Refugee Council spokesperson Aran Mylvaganam said two people were arrested after cutting through a fence to reach a tarmac area.

"We chanted, we tried many different ways to stop the deportation, and two of our supporters managed to cut through the fence and go to the tarmac area, where the family was being held," he told the ABC.

Mr Mylvaganam said Priya saw her fiancé and five other men from her village burned alive before she fled Sri Lanka.

The family is now in accommodation in Darwin, anxiously waiting for the outcome of Friday's court hearing.

Allegations of rough treatment

Family friend Angela Fredericks said Priya was injured when security guards forced her onto the plane in Melbourne and she was not allowed to sit with her daughters Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, even though the youngest girl was highly distressed.

"This is just cruel and barbaric stuff," Ms Fredericks told AAP.

Priya and Nadesalingam came to Australia separately by boat in 2012 and 2013.

The family has been in a Melbourne detention centre since March 2018, after being taken from their home in Biloela, in Queensland, during a pre-dawn raid.

They had lived in the town for four years on a temporary bridging visa before it ran out in March 2018.

The High Court denied their final bid to stay in May 2018.

Last week the family found out their efforts to stay in the country had been rejected.

The family has received strong support from the Australian community with more than 200,000 people signing a Change.org online petition to allow them to stay.

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