By JOHN PYE and ROD McGUIRK-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic faces de­por­ta­tion again af­ter the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment re­voked his visa for a sec­ond time, the lat­est twist in the on­go­ing saga over whether the No. 1-ranked ten­nis play­er will be al­lowed to com­pete in the Aus­tralian Open de­spite be­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19.

Im­mi­gra­tion Min­is­ter Alex Hawke said Fri­day he used his min­is­te­r­i­al dis­cre­tion to can­cel the 34-year-old Serb’s visa on pub­lic in­ter­est grounds — just three days be­fore play be­gins at the Aus­tralian Open, where Djokovic has won a record nine of his 20 Grand Slam ti­tles.

Djokovic’s lawyers were ex­pect­ed to ap­peal at the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court, which they al­ready suc­cess­ful­ly did last week on pro­ce­dur­al grounds af­ter his visa was first can­celed when he land­ed at a Mel­bourne air­port.

A court hear­ing Fri­day night heard Djokovic would not be de­tained or de­port­ed overnight, but would have to at­tend a meet­ing with his lawyers and im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials in Mel­bourne at 8 a.m. lo­cal time Sat­ur­day.

De­por­ta­tion from Aus­tralia can lead to a three-year ban on re­turn­ing to the coun­try, al­though that may be waived, de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances.

Hawke said he can­celed the visa on “health and good or­der grounds, on the ba­sis that it was in the pub­lic in­ter­est to do so.” His state­ment added that Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son’s gov­ern­ment “is firm­ly com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing Aus­tralia’s bor­ders, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

Mor­ri­son him­self wel­comed Djokovic’s pend­ing de­por­ta­tion. The whole episode has touched a nerve in Aus­tralia, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Vic­to­ria state, where lo­cals went through hun­dreds of days of lock­downs dur­ing the worst of the pan­dem­ic and there is a vac­ci­na­tion rate among adults of more than 90%.

Aus­tralia is cur­rent­ly fac­ing a mas­sive surge in virus cas­es dri­ven by the high­ly trans­mis­si­ble omi­cron vari­ant. On Fri­day, the na­tion re­port­ed 130,000 new cas­es, in­clud­ing near­ly 35,000 in Vic­to­ria state. Al­though many in­fect­ed peo­ple aren’t get­ting as sick as they did in pre­vi­ous out­breaks, the surge is still putting se­vere strain on the health sys­tem, with more than 4,400 peo­ple hos­pi­tal­ized. It’s al­so caus­ing dis­rup­tions to work­places and sup­ply chains.

“This pan­dem­ic has been in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for every Aus­tralian but we have stuck to­geth­er and saved lives and liveli­hoods. ... Aus­tralians have made many sac­ri­fices dur­ing this pan­dem­ic, and they right­ly ex­pect the re­sult of those sac­ri­fices to be pro­tect­ed,” Mor­ri­son said in a state­ment. “This is what the Min­is­ter is do­ing in tak­ing this ac­tion to­day.”

Every­one at the Aus­tralian Open — in­clud­ing play­ers, their sup­port teams and spec­ta­tors — is re­quired to be vac­ci­nat­ed for the ill­ness caused by the coro­n­avirus. Djokovic is not in­oc­u­lat­ed and had sought a med­ical ex­emp­tion on the grounds that he had COVID-19 in De­cem­ber.

That ex­emp­tion was ap­proved by the Vic­to­ria state gov­ern­ment and Ten­nis Aus­tralia, ap­par­ent­ly al­low­ing him to ob­tain a visa to trav­el. But the Aus­tralian Bor­der Force re­ject­ed the ex­emp­tion and can­celed his visa when he land­ed in Mel­bourne on Jan. 5.

Djokovic spent four nights in an im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion ho­tel be­fore a judge on Mon­day over­turned that de­ci­sion. That rul­ing al­lowed Djokovic to move freely around Aus­tralia and he has been prac­tic­ing at Mel­bourne Park dai­ly to pre­pare to play in a tour­na­ment he has won each of the past three years.

He had a prac­tice ses­sion orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for mid-af­ter­noon Fri­day at Rod Laver Are­na, the tour­na­ment’s main sta­di­um, but pushed that to the morn­ing and was fin­ished sev­er­al hours be­fore Hawke’s de­ci­sion was an­nounced in the ear­ly evening.

Af­ter the visa can­cel­la­tion from Hawke, me­dia start­ed gath­er­ing out­side the build­ing where Djokovic re­port­ed­ly was meet­ing with his lawyers.

An Aus­tralian Open spokes­woman said tour­na­ment or­ga­niz­ers did not have any im­me­di­ate com­ment on the lat­est de­vel­op­ment in Djokovic’s sit­u­a­tion, which has over­shad­owed all oth­er sto­ry lines head­ing in­to the year’s first Grand Slam event.

“It’s not a good sit­u­a­tion for any­one,” said Andy Mur­ray, a three-time Grand Slam cham­pi­on and five-time run­ner-up at the Aus­tralian Open. “Just want it ob­vi­ous­ly to get re­solved. I think it would be good for every­one if that was the case. It just seems like it’s dragged on for quite a long time now — not great for the ten­nis, not great for the Aus­tralian Open, not great for No­vak.”

Ten­nis Aus­tralia an­nounced that nine play­ers would hold pre-tour­na­ment news con­fer­ences Sat­ur­day, and Djokovic’s name was not on the list.

With his le­gal sit­u­a­tion still in lim­bo, Djokovic was placed in the tour­na­ment brack­et in Thurs­day’s draw, slat­ed to face Miomir Kec­manovic in an all-Ser­bian matchup in the first round.

Ac­cord­ing to Grand Slam rules, if Djokovic is forced to pull out of the tour­na­ment be­fore the or­der of play for Day 1 is an­nounced, No. 5 seed Rublev would move in­to Djokovic’s spot in the brack­et and face Kec­manovic.

If Djokovic with­draws from the tour­na­ment af­ter Mon­day’s sched­ule is re­leased, he would be re­placed in the field by what’s known as a “lucky los­er” — a play­er who los­es in the qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment but gets in­to the main draw be­cause of an­oth­er play­er’s ex­it be­fore com­pe­ti­tion has start­ed.

And if Djokovic plays in a match — or more — and then is told he can no longer par­tic­i­pate in the tour­na­ment, his next op­po­nent would sim­ply ad­vance to the fol­low­ing round and there would be no re­place­ment.

Mel­bourne-based im­mi­gra­tion lawyer Kian Bone said Djokovic’s lawyers face an “ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult” task to get court or­ders over the week­end to al­low their client to play next week.

Speak­ing hours be­fore Hawke’s de­ci­sion was an­nounced, Bone said: “If you left it any lat­er than he has done now, I think from a strate­gic stand­point, he’s re­al­ly ham­string­ing Djokovic’s le­gal team, in terms of what sort of op­tions or reme­dies he could ob­tain.”

Djokovic’s lawyers would need to go be­fore a du­ty judge of the Fed­er­al Cir­cuit and Fam­i­ly Court, or a high­er judge of the Fed­er­al Court, to get two ur­gent or­ders. One or­der would be an in­junc­tion pre­vent­ing his de­por­ta­tion, such as what he won in court last week.

The sec­ond would force Hawke to grant Djokovic a visa to play.

“That sec­ond or­der is al­most not prece­dent­ed,” Bone said. “Very rarely do the courts or­der a mem­ber of the ex­ec­u­tive gov­ern­ment to grant a visa.”

McGuirk re­port­ed from Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia.