UK: Immigration detainees treated like "parcels not people"
01 March 2006
The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Ann Owers, has said that UK officials treat immigration detainees "like parcels, not people". Owers, in two reports into immigration holding centres at Heathrow Airport and at British-run centres in Calais, France, that were published in April, criticised the "inhumane" conditions and called for "urgent action" to improve the situation.
The first report, is based on unannounced visits to holding facilities at the port of Calais and at Cocquelles in August 2005. The centres were established under international treaty on French soil by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND). At Coquelles there are two short-term holding facilities, (Coquelles Freight and Coquelles Tourist) and at Calais seaport ferry terminal there is another holding centre located near passenger control. Those detained are held on an authority to detain form (IS91) under the Frontier Controls Treaty which allows the application of UK immigration law within these zones.
In her report Owers describes the Securicor (G4S)-run cells at Calais as being so small that staff called them "dog kennels". Questioning the safety of the facilities, Owers notes that Securicor's fundamental task is that detainees are held safely and notes:
It was therefore worrying that none of the facilities could appropriately separate men, women and children, nor were appropriate child protection arrangements in place. Basic safety was also compromised by staff uncertainty as to their powers under French law to use force to intervene in fights, prevent escapes or stop attempts at suicide and self-harm
Owers urges the IND to "resolve this issue as a matter of urgency in consultation with its French counterparts."
The Inspector also says that urgent liaison with the French authorities is also needed in the areas of health and safety, healthcare, child protection and disability obligations. The report points to the fact that there was little for detainees to do at the centres, that there was no hot food and "that accommodation at Coquelles Freight terminal was disrespectful and wholly inadequate and that hygiene arrangements were insufficient to cope with detainees who might have travelled in the backs of lorries in insanitary conditions." None of the centres were equipped to hold people overnight and all needed "some form of local independent monitoring".
Owers second report was into the Group 4 Securicor short term holding facilities at Heathrow, including the appropriately named Queen's Building, which handles the greatest number of forced removals from the UK. While praising the attitude of staff, Owers found "that none of the five facilities was fit to hold detainees overnight, or, in their present state, to hold children" and that staff lacked child protection training or adequate criminal records checks. Owers says that families and single men were held together and that basic requirements for overnight detention (blankets, toiletries and suitable sleeping berths) were not available in all of the centres.
The Chief Inspector reserves some her most damning criticism for the "dehumanising aspects of the immigration removal process itself". Of this process she writes:
Some of those we observed in detention had been dealt with by the immigration authorities as though they were parcels, not people; and parcels whose contexts and destination were sometimes incorrect. At Queen's Building, two of the files we examined contained paperwork belonging to a different person. We observed detainees asking for, and failing to get, legal advice and basic information about the reasons for their detention or removal. We came across two detainees, one a pregnant young woman and the other a young man summarily taken from a removal centre without any appropriate care or attention to their individual needs.
Owers also points to the use of force on reluctant "returnees" who cause a disruption in situations that ri