In 2011 in the WA Coroner's Court, Newhouse represented the survivors and relatives of those who died in the 2010 Christmas Island boat disaster; and he represented the next of kin of one of the three suicides in Villawood before the NSW Coroner. He also obtained an injunction to stop the first Afghan asylum seeker to be forcibly returned to Afghanistan. In 2013 he acted for two vulnerable youths in immigration detention and had them released into the community. In 2013 and 2014 together with Julian Burnside and Dan Mori he mounted a Constitutional Challenge to the detention of asylum seekers on Nauru. Newhouse fought for the rights of those indefinitely detained in immigration detention to be released or to have their adverse ASIO determinations reviewed.