In-Depth Briefing: The Illegal Migration Bill and the Expansion of Detention
This Government’s Illegal Migration Bill poses a serious threat to the fundamental rights of adults and children in the UK’s immigration system.
The Bill threatens to undermine – or remove entirely – many of the basic rights of people seeking asylum, people who have been trafficked and people facing deportation. The Bill fails to create appropriate safeguards or alternative policies to protect people from abuses in the immigration and detention systems, placing children, pregnant women, survivors of Modern Slavery and many other people at significantly greater risk of harm.
The Bill, if enacted, could lead to the unprecedented expansion of the UK’s detention system, requiring the building of ten times as many detention facilities and subjecting tens of thousands more people each year to the harm and hopelessness of prolonged and indefinite detention.
The Illegal Migration Bill is currently being considered by the House of Lords, who have the power to propose amendments to the Bill as well as oppose it entirely. To make sure peers have access to all the relevant facts about how the Illegal Migration Bill affects immigration detention, we have produced this in-depth briefing with our colleagues at Bail for Immigration Detainees and Women for Refugee Women.
The full briefing can be found by clicking the Download button.