A desperate mother faces an anxious wait to learn if a Melbourne judge will support her proposed deportation and separation from her baby daughter.
Vietnamese asylum seeker Huyen Tran, 29, arrived in Australia on a boat in 2011 after fleeing religious persecution in her home country.
She has spent almost a year in detention and in that time gave birth to her daughter, Isabella, who is six-months-old.
"If I would be deported to Vietnam I could be sent to jail or even killed," Ms Tran said through an interpreter in Melbourne's Federal Circuit Court on Monday.
"I don't want that to happen because if I was killed my daughter wouldn't have a mother."
Ms Tran said as a Catholic in a communist and non-religious country she had been targeted and was not able to speak freely.
"In the past because I just try to protect the statue of Jesus' mother I was assaulted ... I was given a hard time and I still have a scar on my head," she said.
Lawyer Christopher McDermott, representing the federal home affairs minister, said there had been "no evidence" of an assault after trying to protect a state of the Virgin Mary.
Instead Ms Tran claimed she was a street child and a minor when she entered Australia, he said.
An assessment could find no evidence to suggest Ms Tran would be harmed if she was returned to Vietnam, Mr McDermott said.
Dozens of protesters rallied outside the court before the hearing in support Ms Tran and her family.
"It's very hard as I only see them two hours every day and if Huyen leaves we don't know what will happen," husband Paul Lee said.
"The worst part is they won't even let us baptise our baby in the church because she's not allowed out of detention."
Judge Philip Burchardt reserved the decision for a future date.
