US resettlement

The group included two Rohingya families with five children.

Over 1500 people, including more than 120 children, remain in offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru, more than half of them from Muslim majority countries banned from the US.

The refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said several Iranian and Somali refugees were refused US resettlement in the last two weeks.

They are Afghan, Pakistani, Rohingyan and Sri Lankan.

The group did not include refugees from Iran or Somalia or any of the Muslim majority countries banned from the US, which account for about half of all refugees on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru.

Advocate Ian Rintoul said the absence from the group of refugees from the banned countries showed the Australian government had no plan to secure the future of those people.

The group comprised, four Afghans, four Pakistanis, three single Rohingyans; and one Rohingya couple and their three children.

The Refugee Action Coalition said they would be settled in various locations, including Chicago, Las Vegas, Texas and Arizona.

This bring the total number of refugees from Nauru resettled in the US to 155, while just 85 refugees from Papua New Guinea's Manus have so far been accepted into America.

Meanwhile, 23 refugees from Manus bound for the US are still in Port Moresby, since they were transferred there in January

Ian Rintoul of the Refugee Action Coalition said 29 refugees left on Sunday comprising four families, eight children and several single men from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This is the fifth group to have departed Nauru since the US resettlement began in September 2016.

Mr Rintoul said although Australian Border Force officials have denied that any nationalities are banned from US resettlement, it was remarkable that no Iranian, Somalis, or Sudanese have been accepted this year.

The group of 26 refugees included two Sri Lankan families, but the rest are single men - Afghan, Pakistani and Rohingyan - who all departed yesterday.

It is the fourth flight of refugees from Nauru since September last year, and the third in February, taking the total number who have been resettled from Nauru to 110.

Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition said if the US resettlement continued at this rate it will be more than a year before the refugees on Nauru are all resettled there.