A 21-year-old Sri Lankan man arrested over the sexual assault of a 20-year-old student at Macquarie University is an asylum seeker, immigration officials have confirmed.

 

However, the accused man was not living in student accommodation at Macquarie University at the time of the attack, an immigration department spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

 

A female student was asleep in a student accommodation building at the uni in Sydney’s northwest when a man broke into her room and indecently assaulted her at about 3.20am on Thursday.

The woman woke up during that attack and the man fled.

 

A Sri Lankan national was arrested by police at Railway Square in Sydney’s CBD about 10.15am on Tuesday and taken for questioning to Surry Hills police station.

 

Macquarie University has previously said there was nothing to link the attack to its ongoing accommodation of asylum seekers.

 

The university provides services for asylum seekers, including temporary accommodation, under a 2012 agreement with the Red Cross Asylum Seeker Assistance Scheme (ASAS).

 

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the incident shows that the government is not keeping track of asylum seekers once they have entered the country.

 

“They’re basically just dumping people out into the community with no care and no responsibility,” Mr Morrison told Fairfax Radio. (AAP)