All detainees at Sydney's Villawood immigration detention centre are to be moved to other facilities tomorrow after asbestos was found at the site.
The relocation comes just before a protest expected to be held at the centre over the Easter weekend.
The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, says she's concerned the protest may disturb the area where recent tests proved asbestos was present at low levels.
But Senator Vanstone says detainees would not have been exposed to the asbestos, which was found in a buffer zone around the facility.
"You can understand that there's no in advance you can control what a group of protesters will do and where they'll go and whether they would seek to draw the NSW police on to that land, and that wouldn't be a satisfactory situation.
"In any event, this land needs to be remediated."
Senator Vanstone says the clean-up work is expected to take about two weeks.