Immigration detention employee fights 7-year-old termination

A solicitor terminated from her position at an immigration detention centre based in Sydney’s west has brought an unfair dismissal application against the operators seven-and-a-half years too late.

Sara Mansour was unable to convince the Fair Work Commission to extend the 21-day filing deadline to allow her to bring unfair dismissal proceedings against her former employer Serco, which operates the Villawood Immigration Centre.

Mansour, who represented herself, submitted she was admitted as a solicitor in mid-2013. Her name still appears on the NSW register.

From October 2009, Mansour was employed as a detention (client) services officer at the centre until an incident in December 2013 while enroute from a police station left her unfit to work.

In 2017, three years after Mansour stopped working at the centre, Serco terminated her because she had “abandoned her employment”.

In submissions to the Fair Work Commission, Mansour said she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and other psychological issues prior to and since her dismissal in May 2017.

She also referred to her father being diagnosed with a serious illness in 2017, and his death in 2019, which caused her condition to worsen.

Mansour said her application has merit “because she was an exemplary employee, and she did not abandon her employment”.

While it was clear from the evidence that Mansour had been struggling with significant mental health issues from June 2017 until an assessment by an expert in January 2020, there was no evidence to suggest she continued to suffer in the years since.

In addition to this, commissioner Stephen Crawford said Mansour had been able to send a “significant number” of emails to Serco to contest her dismissal when she became aware of it in June 2017.

“That indicates that while Mansour was clearly suffering from serious mental illness at that time, the illness did not prevent Mansour from taking steps to dispute her dismissal,” Crawford said.

“Based on her ability to send those emails, I consider Mansour would also have been able to file an unfair dismissal application around this time if she had been aware of that option.”

While Crawford accepted Mansour’s mental health worsened after her father’s death, he said these “unfortunate circumstances” do not provide a satisfactory explanation for the period of delay.

“In relation to Mansour not being aware that an unfair dismissal application can be filed after the 21-day filing period, it is well established that ignorance of the statutory provisions is not a satisfactory explanation for filing an application late,” he added.

The case is: Sara Mansour v Serco Pty Ltd - [2025] FWC 805.