UK: Yarl’s Wood: “No place for a child”, by Trevor Hemmings
01 October 2009
Each year an estimated 2,000 children are held in immigration detention centres for administrative purposes, an experience the Children's Commissioner describes as "like being in prison." Children have been separated from their parents, denied essential medical treatment, and suffered severe physiological distress.
Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre was the government’s “flagship” detention centre built near Clapham, in Bedfordshire. It opened in November 2001 and now holds up to 900 detainees, mainly women and children (some as young as three months old), making it the largest detention centre in Europe at the time. It cost approximately £100m to construct and no expense was spared on its security measures, including scores of fixed and moving cameras, microwave detection units to foil escapes, and chain-link fencing two and a half metres high topped by barbed wire. Since opening, the centre has been tainted by allegations of mistreatment of its detainees. In 2002 the site was gutted by fire because of the failure to install fire sprinklers on account of their cost. The centre reopened the following year after an estimated £40 million refit. Throughout its existence there have been a series of hunger strikes and protests by detainees alleging abuse and it has been the subject of many highly critical investigations. [1]
In December 2001, shortly after opening, the first hunger strike began with detainees complaining that they were being treated like prisoners although they had not committed a crime. In early February 2002, much of the centre was burnt down following protests triggered after an elderly Nigerian woman was physically restrained by staff after requesting permission to attend church. At the trial of 11 male detainees charged in connection with the fire (four of whom were convicted of affray or violent disorder in what is widely perceived by campaigners to have been a miscarriage of justice), the question was raised as to whether the decision to prevent police and fire-fighters gaining access to the centre put the lives of detainees at risk. Private security company, Group 4, had ordered staff to leave the building, locking the detainees inside. Five people were injured and it later emerged that the government had failed to install adequate fire safety equipment because of its expense. In the aftermath of the fire, the Fire Brigades' Union criticised the decision to leave 250 asylum seekers incarcerated in the centre in “unsafe” conditions and it also condemned the Home Office's failure to fit sprinklers. Although there was an investigation, no members of Group 4 were ever prosecuted. [2]
In March 2004, the Prisons and Probations Ombudsman published a report into allegations of racism, abuse and violence by staff, based on claims made by an undercover reporter for the
Daily Mirror newspaper. The article produced evidence of a number of racist incidents and staff were disciplined following publication of the journalist’s findings. The report also found that an allegation of assault had not been adequately investigated. In October 2004, the prisons and probations ombudsman published an inquiry into the 2001 disturbance and fire. A main finding was that the provision of safety equipment (sprinklers) would have prevented the damage caused to the centre. In February 2005, a local fire chief said that the lessons of the fire had not been learnt when the government refused to introduce sprinklers. [3]
In September 2005, Manuel Bravo, an asylum seeker from Angola, was found hanging in a stairwell on the morning of his 35th birthday. He was in detention awaiting removal with his 13-year old son following a dawn raid at his home. A note left in his room said: “I kill myself because I don't have a life to live any more. I want my son Antonio to stay in the UK to continue his studies”. Manuel had claimed that he had not received a decision on his asylum appeal and therefore did not understand why he had been served with a removal. [4]
In February 2006, the Chief Inspector of Prisons published an investigation into the quality of health care at the detention centre which found substantial gaps in provision and made 134 recommendations. [5] Ann Owers’ “most important concern...remained the detention of children”. In the same year a Legal Action for Women (LAW) study found that 70% of women detained had reported being raped and that nearly half of them had been detained for over three months. It also found that 57% lacked any legal representation. The women also told the researchers of sexual and racial intimidation by private security guards. [6] In May 2007 another hunger strike began which involved over 100 women.
In February 2008 the Chief inspector of prisons, following an inspection of Yarl’s Wood, wrote:
The plight of detained children remained of great concern. While child welfare services had improved, an immigration removal centre can never be a suitable place for children and we were dismayed to find cases of disabled children being detained and some children spending large amounts of time incarcerated. We were concerned about ineffective and inaccurate monitoring of length of detention in this extremely important area. Any period of detention can be detrimental to children and their families, but the impact of lengthy detention is particularly extreme. [7]
The previous Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, has a statutory duty to promote awareness of the views and interests of children, particularly regarding their physical and mental health and emotional wellbeing, their education, training and recreation and protecting them from harm and neglect. Two thousand children are detained annually for administrative purposes for immigration control, the majority of them in Yarl’s Wood. The Children’s Commissioner has visited the detention centre three times because of his “profound concern over the treatment and management of children in that location.”
After his second visit in May 2008 he published a report,
The Arrest and Detention of Children Subject to Immigration Control, [8] based on interviews with detained children and their families. He states unequivocally that “the administrative detention of children for immigration control must end” and that "the UK should not be detaining any child who has had an unsuccessful asylum claim." However, recognising that the process was unlikely to end immediately, he “called upon Government to ensure that detention genuinely occurs only as a last resort and for the shortest possible time following the application of a fair, transparent decision-making process.” The average length of incarceration for children at Yarl’s Wood has risen from eight to 15 days, although some children remain for more than a month and at least one child has been detained for more than 100 days.
Aynsley-Green also found that children had been denied urgent medical treatment, handled violently and left at risk of serious harm. For instance, the report details how children are transported in caged vans and watched by opposite sex staff as they dress. The report also contained detailed recommendations for the UK Border Agency (UKBA) - the authority responsible for enforcing the UK’s immigration laws - relating to “many highly unsatisfactory aspects of the process of arrest, detention and enforced removal of children and their families.”
The report made 42 recommendations, emphasising six “top-line” ones that underpinned Aynsley-Green’s conclusions. Most importantly, and based on his finding that many of the children held at the centre found their experience "like being in prison", he recommended the end of the administrative detention of children for immigration purposes.
1. Detaining children for administrative reasons is never likely to be in their best interests or to contribute to meeting the Government’s outcomes for children under the Every Child Matters framework [9]. The administrative detention of children for immigration purposes should therefore end.
2. Exceptional circumstances for detention must be clearly defined and should only be used as a measure of last resort and for the shortest period of time in line with the requirements of Article 37(b) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
3. The UK Border Agency (UKBA) should develop community-based alternatives to detention which ensure that children’s needs are met, and their rights not breached, during the process of removal. We acknowledge that UKBA needs to take a risk-based approach to immigration. However, we do not believe that this needs to be incompatible with acting in the best interests of the child as required by Article 3 of the UNCRC.
4. Since the detention of children is unlikely to end immediately as we would wish, the recommendations made at the end of each chapter should be urgently implemented to ensure children are treated in compliance with Every Child Matters [10] principles and the UNCRC.
5. In line with international human rights standards, and the Government’s removal of the reservation against Article 22 of the UNCRC, the Government should monitor compliance with these standards particularly in relation to the detention of children.
6. UKBA should set out the accountabilities of all agencies, from the Home Office through to the providers, clearly and unambiguously so that detainees, interested agencies and the public are aware of the respective agencies’ responsibilities and accountabilities with regard to the detention and removal of failed asylum seekers.”
Following the publication of the report, Lisa Nandy, Policy Adviser at The Children’s Society, said that the lack of healthcare provision for children at Yarl’s Wood, puts lives at risk:
This report reflects what we are seeing on the ground today with families who are currently detained in Yarl’s Wood...As the report concludes, poor healthcare provision is literally putting children's lives at risk. Extremely ill children have been detained and denied access to essential medication, health records haven’t been checked and children whose health has deteriorated rapidly in detention have not been released. Children who had to be hospitalised were surrounded by armed guards in hospital, causing them 'profound distress'. It is outrageous that children in the UK are subject to such inhumane treatment at the hands of the state. [10]
Also commenting on the report, Amanda Shah, Assistant Director-Policy at Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), added that the government paid no regard to the welfare of children and could not even be bothered to keep records on the numbers detained:
The trauma experienced by children in detention comes across very strongly in this report. They describe being transported in caged, urine soaked vans, separated from parents and not being allowed to go to the toilet. There is no proper provision to deal with their psychological distress, directly caused by the Government’s detention policies. As the report makes clear, these children are not being detained as a last resort or for the shortest period of time, as the Government often claims. All the available evidence shows children are detained for longer periods with little or no regard for their health or welfare, falling far short of the UK's international obligations. Some children are detained repeatedly, and others for very lengthy periods. The Government cannot refute these claims because it does not even bother to count how many children it detains.” [11]
In November 2009 the Home Affairs Committee released a report in which it also expressed concerns at the detention of children in what was “essentially a prison”. However, it fell short of accepting that families and small children should not be locked up in the first place. [12] At the same time a briefing by health practitioners, entitled
Significant Harm, argued that the “detention [of children] is unacceptable and should cease without delay”. [13] It found that children were suffering significant harm because they had no access to basic medical care and were being left in pain or significantly traumatised.
The Children’s Commissioner revisited Yarl’s Wood in October 2009, to examine the impact of his earlier report in “generating change in resources and practice”. This follow-up report, published in February 2010, [14] documents his findings and conclusions, setting out “the childrens’ perspective of their experiences following any changes arising from my previous report”. In particular, he considered whether the arrangements now in place have addressed his concerns. Acknowledging that some of his previous recommendations had been upheld (such as stopping the use of caged vans to transport children to the centre) he nonethless re-emphasised his earlier finding that Yarl’s Wood remains “no place for a child”:
We stand by our contention that arrest and detention are inherently damaging to children and that Yarl’s Wood is no place for a child.
In addition he raised new “significant concerns” about the physical and mental wellbeing of children, observing behavioural changes on and after their incarceration. In one incident at the detention centre a nurse failed to recognise that a young girl had a broken arm, and she had to wait 20 hours before being granted access to a hospital. These concerns echo those of leading medical practitioners, such as Dr Rosalyn Proops, officer for child protection at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, on the children’s psychiatric and developmental welfare. She supports his call for an end to child detention:
We are very concerned about the health and welfare of children in immigration detention. These children are among the most vulnerable in our communities and detention causes unnecessary harm to their physical and mental health. The current situation is unacceptable and we urge the Government to develop alternatives to detention without delay. [15]
Despite the Commissioner’s recommendations regarding the “distressing and harmful” effects of detention on young children and the weight of expert medical and psychiatric opinion, Home Office minister, Meg Hillier, argues that the experts have simply got it wrong, stating that the treatment of children with “care and compassion is an absolute priority for the UK Border Agency.” Her view was shared by UKBA’s strategic director of criminality and detention, David Wood, who made it clear that in his opinion any long term damage to a child’s physical and mental health had nothing to do with their detention but was: “the fault of parents making “vexatious” legal claims and using judicial review to delay deportation.”
A new hunger strike at Yarl’s Wood began on 4 February 2010. Over 70 women protested against poor conditions, being separated from their children, poor health and legal provisions and long periods of detainment. The women also say that they were subjected to racial and physical abuse when guards locked them in an airless corridor for eight hours to isolate them from other inmates. By late February 30 women continued to protest and concerns were growing for their health as they entered the third week of their hunger strike. Four of women have been identified as “ringleaders” and moved to prison (two to HMP Holloway and two to HMP Bronzefield).[16] On 19 March most of the women ended their hunger strike, vowing to resume if the authorities donot investigate their complaints. Serco, the privatised company now running Yarl’s Wood, and the UKBA refused to confirm the number, nationality and status of the hunger strikers to stifle publicity.
Despite the detention authorities’ attempts to prevent information from emerging, supporters are ensured that the women’s voices are heard. In late February, Victoria Odeleye (32), who moved to the UK from Nigeria six years ago, said:
We need our cases looking at. I have a little girl and am not a criminal but I have been locked up in here for 15 months and no one can tell me when that will change.
Other women complained that they had been beaten and racially abused. Adeola Omotosho, who was involved in the protests before being released, said: "At times they call us black monkey, they call us different names. Any lady who refused to be deported, what they did is beat her." [17]
Home Office minister, Meg Hillier, has written a letter to Labour MPs about the hunger strike, condemning “current misreporting, based on inaccurate and fabricated statements”. Her letter speaks of healthcare at the detention in glowing terms and describes supporters of the imprisoned women as “irresponsible”. Hillier says they caused “unnecessary distress to the women of Yarl’s Wood, their family and friends.”. On the other hand, at least a dozen women have managed to speak to the media to provide a detailed portrayal of events.[18]
Support for the hunger strike is growing. Labour MP, John McDonnell, tabled a Parliamentary Early Day Motion (No. 919) on the “Hunger strike at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre” on 23 February. It read:
“this House notes that women detained in Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre have been on hunger strike since 5 February 2010 in protest against being detained for up to two years; condemns the detention of victims of rape and other torture, of mothers separated from their children and anyone who does not face imminent removal; believes that such detention flouts international conventions and UK immigration rules; requests that HM Inspector of Prisons urgently carries out an independent investigation into reports of violence, mistreatment and racist abuse from guards, being kettled for over five hours in a hallway, denied access to toilets and water and locked out in the freezing cold, which women have made to their lawyers, the media and supporters, including the All African Women's Group and Black Women's Rape Action Project; and calls for a moratorium on all removals and deportations of the women who took part in the hunger strike pending the results of that investigation.” [19]
Endnotes
1. c.f. Frances Webber “Border wars and asylum crimes” (Statewatch, UK) 2006
2. Stephen Shaw “Report of the inquiry into the disturbance and fire at Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre” (November) 2004.
See also Harmit Athwal “Yarl's Wood trial - a miscarriage of justice?” 3.9.03. http://www.irr.org.uk/2003/september/ha000005.html
3. Daily Mirror, 8.12.03.
Minister for Citizenship and Immigration “Investigation into Allegations of Racism, Abuse and Violence at Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre” http://www.ppo.gov.uk/docs/special-yarls-wood-abuse-03.pdf
4. Ian Herbert “Asylum seeker kills himself so child can stay in Britain” The Independent 17.9.05
See also ”Driven to desperate measures” (IRR) 2006, for a discussion of 221 asylum seekers and migrants who have died in the UK or attempting to reach the UK over a period of 17 years.
http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf/Driventodesperatemeasures.pdf
5. Reported by the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns: http://www.ncadc.org.uk/archives/filed%20newszines/oldnewszines/Old%2051-100/newszine60/owers.htm
6. Legal Action for Women “A Bleak House" for Our Times: An investigation into Yarl's Wood Removal Centre” http://www.allwomencount.net/EWC%20LAW/womenagainstlaw.htm
7. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons “Report on an unannounced short follow-up inspection of Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, 4 – 8 February 2008”
8. Sir Al-Aynsley Green “The Arrest and Detention of Children Subject to Immigration Control: A report following the Children’s Commissioner for England’s visit to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre” (May 2009)
http://www.11million.org.uk/force_download.php?fp=%2Fclient_assets%2Fcp%2Fpublication%2F361%2Fimmigration_control_full_report.pdf
9. Every Child Matters: “is a shared programme of change to improve outcomes for all children and young people. It takes forward the Government's vision of radical reform for children, young people and families.” http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/everychildmatters/
10. Children’s Society and BID press statement http://www.biduk.org/news/STATEMENT%20IN%20RESPONSE%20TO%2011%20MILLION%20REPORT%20final.pdf
Children’s Society website: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/
11.ibid, BID website: http://www.biduk.org/
See also BIDs “Briefing paper on children and immigration detention” February 2009
http://www.biduk.org/library/BID%20briefing%20on%20children%20and%20immigration%20detention%20Feb%2009.pdf
12. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmhaff/73/7304.htm
13. Royal College of General Practitioners, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of Psychiatrists and the UK Faculty of Public Health Intercollegiate Briefing Paper “Significant Harm - the effects of administrative detention on the health of children, young people and their families”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/images/intercollegiate_statement_dec09.pdf
14. Sir Al Aynsley Green, The Arrest and Detention of Children Subject to Immigration Control: Follow-up report (February 2010)
http://www.11million.org.uk/content/publications/content_393
15. The Royal Colleges of Paediatrics press release 10.12 09.
http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/press/pressreleases2009/immigrationdetention.aspx
16. National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns press release 17.1.10.
17. Cited in The Guardian 21.2.09.
18. See Labour MP Diane Abbott “The real distress at Yarl’s Wood” Guardian 1.3.10.
19. http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=40528&SESSION=903