CW: Suicide and self-harm
At Detention Action, we support hundreds of people in immigration detention each year.
Every day, we see the Home Office locking people away in small cells for up to 12 hours a day, in prison-like detention facilities. There is no time limit on how long people can be detained. With unreliable access to healthcare, interpretation, and legal advice, people’s health and wellbeing deteriorate.
On Monday, the Home Secretary announced her flagship asylum reforms. Far from being the reform that is actually needed, her proposals will put more people — including the most vulnerable — into detention and expose them to serious risks of harm.
In the proposals, the government plans to review refugee claims every 2.5 years. In addition to the instability this will cause, people who are stripped of their protection will potentially be at risk of being placed in detention and forcibly removed. This could happen even after refugees spend years — or even decades — rebuilding their lives in the UK.
This government also announced its intention to remove families from the UK, with an upcoming consultation on the enforced removal of families with children. We are concerned that this will result in a return to the routine detention of children, which causes immense harm. Children should never be subjected to the dangers of detention.
The Home Secretary also plans to make it even harder for survivors of human trafficking who do not report their experiences ‘‘at the earliest possible moment’’ to seek support. Evidence repeatedly suggests that survivors are often unable to do so because they are not aware that what they have experienced amounts to human trafficking, they are coerced by their traffickers to tell a different story, or they do not feel safe sharing their experiences with authorities.
One in four people we support show signs of being trafficked. We know it takes time and care to build trust and support survivors. Denying them support will only lead to further harm and exploitation.
This government also intends to increase the forced removal of people under the UK-France deal. We have already witnessed the harm caused to people detained under this deal, including refugees, children wrongly classified by the Home Office as adults, and survivors of human trafficking. Many have experienced severe mental health crises, with some self-harming or attempting to take their own lives. The legal support and medical services that are meant to help these people in detention are failing.
Instead of addressing serious failings in the current detention and removal systems, this government’s divisive proposals will only create more chaos and misery.
At Detention Action, we stand with those seeking asylum and remain committed to providing support and advice to people in detention as they navigate this increasingly hostile system.