Australians are rallying around the country urging Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to overturn the high court ruling and let 267 asylum seekers who were sent to Australia from Nauru for medical treatment stay.
Australians were urged to rally in every city around the country on Monday night, with GetUp! campaigning to #LetThemStay using the power of numbers and social media.
More than 6,000 Australians around the country clicked 'attending' to the rallies on Facebook.
The hashtag #LetThemStay was trending on Twitter on Monday night, with more than 10,000 tweets of support.
The rallies come after Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews wrote Turnbull a letter, which he also tweeted publicly, offering to take all 267 asylum seekers as permanent residents in the state.
South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr have since offered to take asylum seekers impacted by the high court ruling, including 37 babies.
New South Wales Premier Mike Baird also said the state would take refugees bound for Nauru if Malcolm Turnbull overturned the high court ruling.
On Wednesday, the High Court ruled the 267 asylum seekers who were in Australia receiving medical treatment would be sent back to Nauru.
Reports that a five-year-old boy who was raped in the detention centre would be sent back to the place where his alleged attacker resides pulled at the heartstrings of many Australians and advocates in particular.
On Monday, Immigration Department officials disputed the alleged rape during a senate estimates meeting, with Cheryl-anne Moy saying “the child is more than double the age of five” and the alleged assault was “physical skin to skin contact” from another child a couple of years older.
Department of Immigration and Border Protection secretary Michael Pezzullo said the reporting around the case had become misleading and was verging on "advocacy parading as journalism”.
The ABC has since apologised for some factual errors in its report which mixed up the ages of two medical cases recounted by pediatrician Dr Karen Zwi, who appeared on 7:30 last Thursday.
"One was an older child," ABC news director Gaven Morris said in a statement. "The doctor stands by her statement that this child was allegedly raped on Nauru."
"She also told our reporters about another of her patients, a five-year-old who was allegedly sexually assaulted on Nauru. Our story incorrectly used quotes about the older child in referring to the younger child."
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has said each of the 267 asylum seekers will return to Nauru when they no longer need medical treatment.