Every year hundreds of children in the UK are detained in immigration centres because their families face deportation, this policy is harmful and must change say medical experts. The Royal Colleges of Paediatrics, GPs and Psychiatrists say other countries have found alternatives to detention and want the British government to take a different approach to
Theme: Education
Dickensian poverty in the twenty-first century
The asylum support system destroys hope and sanity. In his home country of Zimbabwe, Gabrial Ziki was chair of the National Aircraft Engineers’ Association – until 2003, when he organised a strike and his life was threatened. He fled to the UK, where, shockingly, his asylum claim was refused, and since then he has received
Cheryl Laws fights deportation
A young woman is facing deportation to the Philippines, miles away from her partner and young daughter. Cheryl Laws, who is 29, spends her days at Yarl’s Wood removal centre waiting to find out if she will be next. If her appeal to stay in the UK fails, her family say, she’ll be forced to
Hands Off My Workmate
At a conference in London last week, a campaign was launched to organise for the rights of migrant workers. The Hands Off My Workmate conference was organised following a high profile raid at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in June 2009 when nine cleaners were detained by immigration officers in full riot
Returned Iraqi asylum seekers on hunger strike
More than forty people, many of them Iraqis who were on last week’s returned charter flight, have gone on hunger strike to demand their immediate release from detention. The hunger strikers are being held in Brook House immigration removal centre, near Gatwick airport. As well as Iraqis, people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Nigeria and Jamaica have
Rule change for asylum seekers
New bureaucratic requirements will make life even more difficult for asylum seekers. From 14 October, all asylum seekers who were unable to claim asylum when they arrived will have to go to the UK Border Agency Asylum Screening Unit in Croydon to make a claim. All those refused asylum who are now making a fresh
Misleading the immigration courts
A recent High Court judgment shows that Tamils have been unlawfully detained and possibly wrongly refused asylum because of Home Office non-disclosure of its own policies. A High Court judge recently held that a Tamil who has been held for deportation for over three years had been unlawfully detained, because the Home Office failed to
The removals lottery
Lawyers are considering ways of extending court rulings to all on mass expulsion charter flights. As reported on IRR News last week (‘Deportation flight goes ahead – without France’), a speedy and concerted campaign by over thirty migrant and human rights organisations led to the French immigration minister withdrawing from a joint Franco-British deportation charter
Deportation flight goes ahead – without France
The French government’s last-minute U-turn on a joint Franco-British deportation charter flight to Kabul organised for 6 October was a victory for refugee and migrant rights groups. Widespread public protest greeted the proposed deportation to Kabul of over one hundred former residents of the woodland squatted area of Calais known as the ‘jungle’ following its
Destitution shame
A report from the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) examines the human misery caused by destitution. ‘No home from home: homelessness for people with no or limited access to public funds’ finds that the government is not complying with international human rights norms in its treatment of new European citizens, refused asylum seekers, victims