Heat detectors for immigrants
01 January 1991
Heat detectors for immigrants
artdoc June=1992
In the wake of the arrest in March of 15 illegal immigrants who
hid in a lorry to come into Britain, the Home Office revealed a
pilot scheme using heat detectors to spot illegal immigrants
smuggled in to the country in trucks and vans. It said that the
scheme, tried in Dover for a week in 1991, had yielded ten
arrests.
The fifteen men were arrested after getting out of a lorry at
an M4 service station. They were Sikhs from the Punjab, where the
Indian security forces have been accused by Amnesty International
of widespread human rights abuses, including extra-judicial
killings, torture and detention without trial of suspected
members of the Khalistan liberation movement. Several of the men
were thought to be asylum-seekers.
Guardian 24.3.92.
Statewatch, vol 2, no 3, May-June 1992