Novak Djokovic will be placed back in detention by Australian authorities on Saturday after his visa was revoked for a second time.

Immigration minister Alex Hawke announced the decision to revoke the tennis star’s visa in a statement on Friday after days of deliberation about whether to eject the 34-year-old Serbian from Australia.

The world’s top-ranked male tennis player’s hopes of contesting the Australian Open and win a record 21st grand slam are now hanging by a thread as his legal team fights to keep him in the country.

Djokovic’s case to stay in Australia will be heard on Saturday before the country’s Federal Court following an emergency hearing before judge Anthony Kelly in the Federal Circuit and Family Court on Friday. Australia’s federal court is a higher body than the court Kelly presided over.

“Today I exercised my power under section 133C(3) of the Migration Act to cancel the visa held by Mr Novak Djokovic on health and good order grounds, on the basis that it was in the public interest to do so,” said Hawke in a statement earlier on Friday.

“In making this decision, I carefully considered information provided to me by the Department of Home Affairs, the Australian Border Force (ABF) and Mr Djokovic. The Morrison Government is firmly committed to protecting Australia’s borders, particularly in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The decision comes four days after judge Kelly ruled that Australian Border Force (ABF) officers had been “unreasonable” when they canceled his initial visa to enter Australia on his arrival in the country on January 5. The judge ordered Djokovic be freed from immigration detention within 30 minutes.

The second cancellation is the latest twist in a saga that has garnered global headlines and put Australia’s Covid and immigration policies under scrutiny.

Under current Australian laws, all international arrivals are required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 — which Djokovic is not — unless they have a medical exemption.

Djokovic said he was under the impression he could enter because two independent panels associated with Tennis Australia and the Victorian state government had granted him an exemption on the grounds that he had been infected with Covid-19 in December.

The federal government argued that, under its rules, previous infection with Covid-19 is not a valid reason for an exemption.

Despite Monday’s ruling, the immigration minister retained ministerial power to personally intervene in the case and ultimately had the final say as to whether Djokovic would be allowed to stay, though his decision can be appealed.

In his ruling, the judge noted that if Djokovic had been deported, he would have been banned from Australia for three years. However this can be waived in special circumstances.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the minister’s decision to cancel Djokovic’s visa protected “sacrifices” Australian had made throughout the pandemic.

In a statement, Morrison said the “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,” he said. “This is what the minister is doing in taking this action today.”

Djokovic to be detained

Djokovic will be interviewed by the ABF at 8 a.m. local time on Saturday (Friday 4 p.m. ET) at an undisclosed location “agreed between the parties” in the case.

At that point, Djokovic will be officially detained by two border force officials and escorted to his lawyers’ office while his case is heard in the federal court.

The location where Djokovic will be met by border officials will remain secret in order to keep the tennis star safe and prevent “a media circus.”

“We have a genuine concern about security and a potential media circus,” Djokovic’s barrister Nick Wood told the court when imploring Judge Kelly to allow Djokovic to be handed over to border officials in private.

Novak Djokovic v Minister for Immigration, as the case file is known, was officially transferred from the Federal Circuit Court to the Federal Court of Australia on Friday.

Wood told the federal circuit court that Hawke had used his personal power to cancel Djokovic’s visa based on grounds he would “excite anti-vax sentiment” should he remain in Australia, describing it as a “radically different approach” in the government’s argument.