Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has acknowledged there is a limit to the number of refugees who will go to the US as part of a resettlement deal with Australia, but said it is "not in our best interests" to reveal the figure.
He emphatically denied a Sky News report that claimed Washington may take just 300 or 400 of the 1600 refugees eligible to apply for resettlement in the US. "That is completely false," Mr Dutton said.
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New home for refugees?
Suggestions the Australian government has made a deal with the US to send asylum seekers there has been slammed by the Greens over Trump racism concerns.
The Turnbull government has repeatedly refused to reveal how many refugees from Manus Island and Nauru the Obama Administration has agreed to take, or whether there is a cap.
But Mr Dutton on Tuesday admitted there was such a limit, when asked directly if he had discussed it with the US. "Yes and I'm not going to detail that, and there are very good reasons for that," he told Sky News.
"It's not in our best interests to have that number out there. [But] the reports about the 300 number are completely false. I don't want people to conjure up in their mind that this is limited by that number - it's not."
Department of Immigration statistics show there were 872 men on Manus Island and 390 people on Nauru at the end of October. A further 750 people live outside the regional processing centre in the Nauruan community.
There were also 377 people, including about 90 families, on the Australian mainland who were brought here for medical treatment. They are eligible to apply for the US offer but may have to return to Nauru or Manus first.
A spokeswoman for the minister confirmed that of those 2400 people, about 1600 have been found to be refugees, with the others either found not be owed protection or still being processed.
Sky News reported that 16 officers from the US Department of Homeland Security will arrive in Nauru on Sunday to commence work on the arrangement but it will not be finalised before Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20.
The pay-TV network, which was given rare access to Nauru, asylum seekers and officials, interviewed many refugees and found most were keen to settle in the US but were sceptical about it happening. Some were hostile to the idea.
Aziz Khan, a Rohinga Muslim from Myanmar who has been on Nauru for two years, said he did not want to go to the US under Mr Trump.
"No, I don't prefer. Because I am a Muslim. The President-elect Donald Trump doesn't like Muslims in his country as a migrant," he said.
Nauruan deputy police commissioner Kalinda Blake said police were concerned about the fate of those who are inevitably left behind, including the possibility they would commit acts of violence or self-harm.
"The Nauru Police force is actually putting plans in place just to cater for should that happen," she said on Sky News. "I would not wish there would be any [cases of self-harm] but will be ready for it if there should be."
In another of the Sky News program's revelations, acting Nauruan president David Adyang admitted the country had banned Australian media outlets from visiting the island, but waived it in certain circumstances.
"Selectively we bring in Australian media to try and provide balanced reporting on what we are doing," he said.