An activist group, the End Detention Network, which claims to represent foreign children in detention centres, said the new Baitul Mahabbah shelter was a de facto detention centre.

“It will continue to deprive them of their rights,” the group said, calling on the government to follow through with its promises to remove children from detention centres permanently.

The group said many countries were now focusing their efforts on ending detention for foreign children altogether and providing community-based, non-institutional care and protection to refugee and migrant children.

“This is the standard Malaysia must emulate,” the group said.

Earlier today the home ministry said it had placed 23 immigrant children in a temporary shelter known as Baitul Mahabbah in Nilai, Negeri Sembilan.

Home minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said the children are among 80 that the government has planned to move to better accommodation before returning them to their home countries.