By ROD McGUIRK-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic was back in im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion Sat­ur­day af­ter his le­gal chal­lenge to avoid be­ing de­port­ed from Aus­tralia for be­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19 was moved to high­er court.

A Fed­er­al Court hear­ing has been sched­uled for Sun­day, a day be­fore the men’s No. 1-ranked ten­nis play­er and nine-time Aus­tralian Open cham­pi­on was due to be­gin his ti­tle de­fense at the first Grand Slam ten­nis tour­na­ment of the year.

Djokovic and his lawyers had a morn­ing meet­ing with im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials and, by mid-af­ter­noon, Aus­tralian me­dia re­port­ed the ten­nis star was tak­en back in­to de­ten­tion. Tele­vi­sion footage showed the 34-year-old Serb wear­ing a face mask as he sat in a ve­hi­cle near an im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion ho­tel.

He spent four nights con­fined to a ho­tel near down­town Mel­bourne be­fore be­ing re­leased last Mon­day when he won a court chal­lenge on pro­ce­dur­al grounds against his first visa can­cel­la­tion.

Im­mi­gra­tion Min­is­ter Alex Hawke on Fri­day blocked the visa, which was orig­i­nal­ly re­voked when he land­ed at a Mel­bourne air­port on Jan. 5.

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

Djokovic has ac­knowl­edged that his trav­el de­c­la­ra­tion was in­cor­rect be­cause it failed to in­di­cate that he’d been in mul­ti­ple coun­tries in the two-week pe­ri­od be­fore his ar­rival in Aus­tralia.

But that wasn’t why Hawke de­cid­ed that de­port­ing Djokovic was in the pub­lic in­ter­est.

Lawyers for Djokovic filed doc­u­ments in court that re­vealed Hawke had stat­ed that the ten­nis star “is per­ceived by some as a tal­is­man of a com­mu­ni­ty of an­ti-vac­ci­na­tion sen­ti­ment.”

Aus­tralia has one of the high­est COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion rates in the world.

But the min­is­ter said Djokovic’s pres­ence in Aus­tralia may be a risk to the health and “good or­der” of the Aus­tralian pub­lic and “may be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to ef­forts at vac­ci­na­tion by oth­ers in Aus­tralia.”

The Health De­part­ment ad­vised that Djokovic was a “low” risk of trans­mit­ting COVID-19 and a “very low” risk of trans­mit­ting the dis­ease at the Aus­tralian Open.”

The min­is­ter cit­ed com­ments Djokovic made in April 2020 that he was “op­posed to vac­ci­na­tion” and had wouldn’t want to be forced by some­one to take a vac­cine to com­pete.

Djokovic’s lawyers ar­gued that the min­is­ter had cit­ed no ev­i­dence that Djokovic’s pres­ence in Aus­tralia may “fos­ter an­ti-vac­ci­na­tion sen­ti­ment.”

Hun­dreds of ac­tivists held a peace­ful ral­ly out­side the Mel­bourne Park com­plex that hosts the Aus­tralian Open, and planned an­oth­er for Mon­day.

“We’re at Rod Laver Are­na to sup­port No­vak. He’s won nine (Aus­tralian Open) ti­tles here. Hope­ful­ly this will be No. 10 -- if he can get out of quar­an­tine and get his visa back,” Har­ri­son McLean, one of the ral­ly or­ga­niz­ers, said. “We’re a peace­ful move­ment, here to raise aware­ness and sup­port every­one’s free­dom of choice.”

On Sat­ur­day, Fed­er­al Chief Jus­tice James All­sop an­nounced that he would hear the case with Jus­tices David O’Callaghan and An­tho­ny Be­sanko.

The de­ci­sion for three judges to hear the ap­peal in­stead of a sin­gle judge el­e­vates the im­por­tance of the case from the ju­di­cia­ry’s per­spec­tive and means any ver­dict would be less like­ly to be ap­pealed.

Syd­ney-based im­mi­gra­tion lawyer Si­mon Jeans said he was sur­prised that Djokovic was no longer be­ing de­port­ed be­cause his COVID-19 in­fec­tion last month did not ex­empt him from Aus­tralia’s strict rules that for­eign vis­i­tors are vac­ci­nat­ed un­less there are sound med­ical rea­sons that they can’t be.

“The unan­swered ques­tion is if Djokovic was such a threat to good or­der, why grant him a visa” in No­vem­ber,” Jeans asked. “This is a high-risk strat­e­gy. It’s go­ing to be much hard­er for the min­is­ter to con­vince three judges that what he did was in the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

Djokovic, who has won the last three Aus­tralian Open ti­tles, will be al­lowed out of ho­tel de­ten­tion on Sun­day to vis­it his lawyers’ of­fices for the video court hear­ing.

He is seek­ing a record 21st Grand Slam sin­gles ti­tle. He is cur­rent­ly tied with Rafael Nadal and Roger Fed­er­er for the most by a man in his­to­ry.

In a post on so­cial me­dia Wednes­day that con­sti­tut­ed his most ex­ten­sive pub­lic com­ments yet on the episode, Djokovic blamed his agent for check­ing the wrong box on his trav­el doc­u­ment, call­ing it “a hu­man er­ror and cer­tain­ly not de­lib­er­ate.”

In that same post, Djokovic said he went ahead with an in­ter­view and a pho­to shoot with a French news­pa­per in Ser­bia de­spite know­ing he’d test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19. Djokovic has been at­tempt­ing to use what he says was a pos­i­tive test tak­en on Dec. 16 to jus­ti­fy a med­ical ex­emp­tion that would al­low him to avoid the vac­cine re­quire­ment on the grounds that he al­ready had COVID-19.

In can­cel­ing Djokovic’ visa, Hawke said Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son’s gov­ern­ment “is firm­ly com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing Aus­tralia’s bor­ders, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.”

The episode has touched a nerve in Aus­tralia, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Vic­to­ria state, where lo­cals went through more than 260 days of lock­downs dur­ing the worst of the pan­dem­ic.

Aus­tralia faces 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 and dis­rupt­ing sup­ply chains.

Djokovic’s sup­port­ers in Ser­bia have been dis­mayed by the visa can­cel­la­tions. Ser­bian Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dar Vu­cic ac­cused the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment of “ha­rass­ing” and “mal­treat­ing” Djokovic and asked whether Mor­ri­son’s gov­ern­ment is just try­ing to score po­lit­i­cal points ahead of up­com­ing elec­tions.

“Why didn’t you re­turn him back right away, or tell him it was im­pos­si­ble to get a visa?” Vu­cic asked the Aus­tralian au­thor­i­ties in a so­cial me­dia ad­dress. “Why are you ha­rass­ing him and why are you mal­treat­ing not on­ly him, but his fam­i­ly and an en­tire na­tion that is free and proud.”

Every­one at the Aus­tralian Open is re­quired to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

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 An­drey Rublev would move in­to Djokovic’s spot in the brack­et.

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.

AP Sports Writer John Pye con­tributed to this re­port.