Indefinite detention

September 12, 2024September 20, 2024

Keeping immigration detention centres closed

11 September 2024: Bridget Walker highlights the need to keep immigration detention centres closed and shares what Friends can do to help.

Immigration detention is a dark corner of a broken system.

For nearly twenty years I was an active member of the Campaign to Close Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre, a detention facility near Oxford. In 2018 the Home Office shut the centre as part of a policy to reduce the numbers of men and women held in immigration detention. The closure was a moment of rejoicing, particularly for those who had experienced detention or who had feared to be picked up and detained as they went about their daily lives.

July 9, 2024July 9, 2024

Conditions at UK immigration removal centre ‘worst inspectors have seen’

9 July 2024: HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor: Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre: drugs, despair and decrepit conditions

Report on an unannounced inspection of Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (12–29 February 2024)

A copy of the full report, published on 9 July 2024, can be found on the HM Inspectorate of Prisons website at: Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre – HM Inspectorate of Prisons (justiceinspectorates.gov.uk)

Inspectors returning to Harmondsworth IRC found the worst conditions they have seen in immigration detention.

Much of the accommodation was decrepit, violence and other unacceptable behaviour such as drug use had substantially increased and there had been numerous serious attempts at suicide in the centre.

The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor was so concerned that he wrote to the then Home Secretary shortly after the inspection setting out the many failures at the centre. He has received no response.

June 1, 2024June 1, 2024

QARN Leaflets: Download them here

8 February 2024: Please note that in our leaflet: ‘QARN – What do Quakers hope for, after the 2024 General Election‘, we mention a model letter for MPs. We have instead produced a crib sheet to highlight the concerns raised in the leaflet, in the hope that people can use this to write to/ speak with prospective MPs or wherever it is useful.

QARN – What do Quakers hope for, after the 2024 General Election – leaflets you can download and print off:

January 19, 2024January 19, 2024

Ending Immigration Detention

Updated 19 January 2024: Detention Forum: The changes we want to see

We want to end immigration detention because it is unjust and inhumane, and as the steps on that journey, here are the key changes that we want to see happen.

All of these issues are supported by our policy papers that have been endorsed by our membership – they reflect the changes that we want to see.

And this is the over-arching narrative of the changes that we want to see on immigration detention.

September 19, 2023October 2, 2023

Detention Centres

In comparison to the Brook House situation reported below, see:

UNHCR-Alternatives To Detention report [Aug 2023]

In conclusion, it is the voices of those involved who make the most powerful case for change in the UK. Their experiences should be considered by governments when seeking to create policy on detention and case resolution. In the UK, as the government considers next steps, it is the voices of those in the pilot that should be at the centre. By understanding their experiences we can build a more humane system for all:

August 27, 2023August 27, 2023

Children reaching UK in small boats sent to jail for adult sex offenders

27 August 2023: Thanks to Maddie Harris and Humans for Rights Network – StatusNow signatories – for exposing this terrible situation:

Guardian: Children reaching UK in small boats sent to jail for adult sex offenders

Human rights group finds growing number of cases of minors held among prisoners

Vulnerable children who arrive in Britain by small boat are being placed in an adult prison that holds significant numbers of sex offenders.

A growing number of cases have been identified where unaccompanied children, many of whom appear to be trafficked, have been sent to HMP Elmley, Kent, and placed among foreign adult prisoners.

According to the most recent inspection of Elmley, the block where foreign nationals are held also houses sex offenders.

January 17, 2023January 17, 2023

The Arrivers: Why Language Matters in Migration Policy

17 January 2023: A Freedom from Torture supporter confronts Suella Bravermann on her inflammatory rhetoric, FFT publicises the video, and the Home Office tries to get them to take it down.

https://www.freedomfromtorture.org/holocaust-survivor-confronted-suella-braverman-to-say-your-hateful-language-has-consequences

January 6, 2023

APPG on detention

Updated 6 January 2023: The Brook House Inquiry: Read the full report.

The evidence received by the Inquiry makes clear, in the view of Medical Justice, that the Home Office is not capable of providing a humane system of immigration detention which respects fundamental rights and is consistent with the health, safety and dignity of those held within it. Troublingly, the recent events at Manston Short-Term Holding Facility provide further stark evidence of this lack of respect and inhumanity. Rather than expanding the use of detention, it should be reduced and phased out.

If administrative detention is to continue at all, its use should be truly an exception rather than routine, and subject to strict statutory criteria and a time limit. This view was widely expressed across all parties giving evidence to the Inquiry13. Like HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP), Medical Justice agrees that Brook House – and other prison-like facilities – should never have been used to detain people for administrative purposes. Such places certainly should not now continue to be used to hold persons detained under immigration powers.

October 31, 2022October 31, 2022

Tagging

31 October 2022: Institute of Race Relations: From GPS tagging to facial recognition watches: expanding the surveillance of migrants in the UK

Written by Lucie Audibert (Lawyer and Legal Officer, Privacy International) & Monish Bhatia (Lecturer in Criminology, Birkbeck, University of London)

Through its use of GPS tags and smartwatches in immigration enforcement, the UK is extending the reach of surveillance and control of migrants to frightening levels.

In early August, we learned that the Ministry of Justice had awarded a £6m contract for ‘facial recognition smartwatches’ to be worn by foreign national offenders. The devices will track their GPS location 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and will require them to scan their faces up to five times a day. The information obtained from the devices, including names, date of birth, nationality, photographs, and location data, will be stored for up to six years and may be accessed by the Home Office and shared with law and border enforcement agencies.

October 22, 2022October 26, 2022

Aderonke Apata – detained in Yarls Wood and now a barrister

This is a story of real hope, and rising above the hostile system. Congratulations Aderonke Apata:

22 October 2022: Guardian: Barrister says she became legal expert while in Home Office immigration detention

Aderonke Apata says she has Home Office to thank for career as she fought removal to Nigeria

A refugee who has just been called to the bar says she has the Home Office to thank for her career after she became an amateur legal expert while locked up in a detention centre.

Aderonke Apata, 55, from Nigeria, said she was proud to take part in a ceremony last week where she, along with dozens of other newly qualified barristers, were formally called to the bar.

Apata was almost forcibly removed from the UK on a Home Office charter flight to Nigeria in January 2013 after her asylum claim, based on the fact that as a lesbian who had been persecuted in Nigeria her life would be in danger if she was returned there, was rejected.

Apata had completed a degree in microbiology before fleeing Nigeria and hoped to pursue a career in public health in the UK.

She was detained in Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre in Bedfordshire, which at the time was used mainly for women, from the end of 2011 until the beginning of 2013, including a week spent in solitary confinement in 2012.

During her time in Yarl’s Wood, more women – who either could not understand English or did not understand what the Home Office had written in refusal letters about their immigration claims – turned to Apata for help in explaining what was happening with their legal cases.