SYDNEY -- Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock criticized Australia's Family Court Tuesday over its decision ordering the release from a detention center of five children facing deportation as illegal immigrants.

A full bench of the court on Monday ordered the government to free the three girls and two boys, aged between six and 14, in a decision which opens the way for the release of more than 100 children held under Australia's uncompromising policy of mandatory detention for all illegal immigrants, AFP reported.

However, Ruddock said the government will go ahead next month with a challenge in the High Court to the Family Court decision, in which it claims responsibility over detained children.

After 31 months in detention, the five children, whose lawyers had appealed against earlier rulings, are now in foster care in Adelaide, while their mother is in hospital with complications arising from her 32-week pregnancy.

Their father, whose temporary protection visa had been canceled because of fraud allegations, remains in detention pending appeal against deportation.

The family, who claimed to be Afghan refugees, were positively identified by immigration authorities as having come from Pakistan.

Ruddock said the full bench of the court should not have overturned a judge's decision that the children should stay in detention.

"I suspect, while his brother judges have disagreed with him, his judgment initially was correct," Ruddock said.

He criticized the courts for failing to prevent asylum-seekers abusing the process, and the Family Court for what he saw as overstepping its jurisdiction.

"One's not supposed to impute the integrity of judges in relation to these matters, but they seem to have a desire to be involved in dealing with these matters, and dealing with them quickly because they say people are in detention," Ruddock said.

Two years to the day after the celebrated Tampa affair, which ushered in Australia's hardline policy of diverting asylum seekers to indefinite detention in Pacific Island holding camps, Ruddock defended the policy saying it had saved many lives.

Ruddock told ABC Radio that while he continued to be vilified by nongovernmental organizations because of the government's hard line, the subsequent decline in the number of refugee boats arriving had saved many lives. "We've possibly saved many lives -- people who won't have got on vessels that are exceedingly vulnerable and life-taking."

The Norwegian freighter Tampa was refused permission in August 2001 to land on the Australian territory of Christmas Island with 433 mainly Afghan asylum-seekers it had rescued from a sinking ferry off Indonesia.