Australia’s Extraterritorial Border Control Policies 57 commercial companies rather than a government official decide if a person has the right to cross the border. This is because states rather than private companies have the legal responsibility to refugees under international law, and it can be more difficult to hold states accountable when they exercise their power through private companies. As Gammeltoft-Hansen notes, “the argument that states incur any obligations under refugee law as a result of carrier controls has been rejected on the premise that these controls are a private matter, distinct from the state’s own authorities and thus responsibility.”11 This makes asserting legal rights such as nonrefoulement, increasingly difficult, successfully deterring many potential legal challenges. Airline Liaison Officers Although it has privatized border controls through carrier sanctions, Australia has not entirely relinquished its border control at airports to airlines. In order to assist airlines in meeting their carrier obligations, Australia has posted Airline Liaison Officers (ALOs) in more than sixteen airports throughout Asia and the Middle East, as these countries are often seen as transit countries for asylum seekers en route to Australia. By its own account, “Australia has one of the most experienced, respected and effective ALO networks in the world.”12 The main function of ALOs is to “assist local immigration and airport authorities and airlines personnel to identify document fraud by checking documents and provide advice on authenticity.”13 As the Department of Immigration describes, “ALOs work with airlines, airport security groups and host governments, as well as colleagues from other countries, and have a dual role of preventing improperly documented passengers from travelling and facilitating the travel of genuine passengers at key overseas airports.”14 In 2014, ALOs prevented “173 improperly documented passengers from travelling to Australia.”15 It is not clear how many of these passengers had attempted to make asylum claims. “The Department of Immigration’s arrangements with host country governments do not specify processes for dealing with asylum claims made by intercepted persons.”16 11 T. Gammeltoft-Hansen, Access to Asylum: International Refugee Law and the Globalisation of Migration Control, Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 17. 12 S. Morrison, “New Measures at Our Borders to Protect against Terrorist Threat,” September 10, 2014, https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22media/press rel/3387218%22. 13 Taylor, “Offshore Barriers to Asylum Seeker Movement,” p. 95. 14 Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2014–2015 Annual Report (2015), 92, www .border.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/annual-reports/DIBP-Annual-Report-201415-optimised.pdf. 15 Ibid. 16 Taylor, “Offshore Barriers to Asylum Seeker Movement,” p. 97. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press