Indefinite detention

April 6, 2025November 14, 2025

QARN Leaflets: Download them here

6 April 2025 – updated QARN leaflets:

Immigration Detention: April 2025
About QARN: April 2025
Countering Myths: April 2025

Also below:

What do Quakers hope for in UK policies (previously: after the 2024 General Election)?
Britain’s Hostile Environment – 2023
Excessive fees applications for Leave to Remain in the UK _ April 2020
Immigration Removals and Deportation _ May 2019
Language matters: challenging the language of asylum and migration_ 2018

You can download the leaflets from this page by clicking on the links below. Please feel free to share these, and print off your own copies.

We thank George Sfougaras for the use of his artwork

March 14, 2025April 5, 2025

LGBTQI+ people in immigration detention

Early Day Motion 809 tabled 24 February 2025: LGBTQI+ people in immigration detention tabled by Bell Ribeiro-Addy

That this House welcomes the ongoing review of the Home Office’s Adults at risk in immigration detention policy; notes that LGBTQI+ people face heightened levels of harassment, discrimination, abuse, and physical and sexual violence in immigration detention; recognises that the bullying of and discrimination against LGBTQI+ people in detention can re-traumatise those who have fled persecution; believes that immigration detention is costly and punitive, and that cheaper and more humane alternatives to detention exist; further welcomes the community-based Alternative to Detention pilots undertaken by the Home Office and supports their wider expansion; calls on the Government to include being gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer in the Adults at risk in immigration detention policies indicators of risk and to remove the categorisation of vulnerability based on evidence levels; and supports the greater use of community-based alternatives to detention.

Please ask your MP to consider supporting this EDM – see the list of signatories here: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/63175

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.

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.