Dear IRR News subscriber,

This weekend, campaigners in Oxford mark twenty-one years since the opening of Campsfield House immigration removal centre by calling for it to be shut down. But the Home Office, apparently, has other plans. Proposals in the pipeline could lead to the doubling of the size of the centre – in-line with the ongoing expansion of the detention estate, and the boosting of profit margins for the private companies which have secured contracts for much of its administration and operation.

It is the role that the private sector in detention and immigration control and the failure to provide social housing that is put under the spotlight in this IRR News bulletin. Frances Webber, in her assessment of a new pilot scheme in the Midlands for private residential landlords to check the immigration status of new tenants, warns that such procedures threaten to make immigration officers of us all. Phil Miller of Corporate Watch discusses the findings of a recent HMIP report on deportation charter flights (operated by the company Tascor) and how the ‘inhumane’ practice of taking detainees to the airport as ‘reserves’ continues. And we also examine the impact privatised detention had on Brian Dalrymple, an American tourist, who died in 2011 after being held in Harmondsworth and Colnbrook immigration removal centres in London.

Our regular calendar of racism and resistance, a fortnightly resource for anti-racist and social justice campaigns, highlights key events in the UK and Europe.

Other materials we would like to draw readers’ attention to this week include the Open Society Foundations’ new report on white working-class communities in Denmark Aarhus, ‘Pukkah Punjabi’s’ analysis of Ukip MP Mark Reckless’ apparent call for the repatriation of migrants, and Seamus Milne’s discussion of how the refusal to accept Britain’s role in the war on terror fosters fear and Islamophobia.

IRR News Team