Red Cross calls for major overhaul of UK’s ‘damaging’ immigration detention system

Exclusive: Charity calls on government to end ‘extremely distressing’ practice of locking up innocent people indefinitely

The British Red Cross has called for an overhaul of the UK’s immigration detention system. Conditions are such that detainees suffer mental health problems which sometimes lead to suicide attempts, according to the charity.

Thousands of innocent asylum seekers – often fleeing war and torture – are detained each year and locked up indefinitely with no support, the charity warned.

In the first intervention of its kind by a major charity, the Red Cross calls for significant reforms including a 28-day limit on detention. It found cases of asylum-seekers being detained for as long as two years and seven months.

Five of the 26 detainees interviewed for the report had attempted suicide while they were detained, and just 25 of them said they had been given no access to mental health support services.

Pregnant women continue to be “needlessly detained” in breach of the Home Office’s own guidance – with 47 pregnant women detained in the year to June 2017.

The charity said the “overly onerous and traumatic” experience of attending immigration reporting centres – which many are required to do every every two weeks – should be overhauled by banning the practice of detaining people when they turn up.

Mike Adamson, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said: “Most of the people in the UK asylum process have fled conflict or persecution to find a place of safety. They have already experienced more trauma and anguish than the rest of us could possibly imagine.

“The threat of detention without notice hangs over many people going through the asylum process in the UK. Our research shows that not knowing whether this week will be the week they are detained again, can make the process of having to report regularly extremely distressing.

“This can exacerbate existing mental health issues and mean people never truly feel free.”

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said the Red Cross report was a “damning indictment” of how the government treats migrants and refugees.

“We know from the Windrush scandal that people are wrongly detained,” she said. “Some suffer indefinite detention without legal representation. The government needs to introduce some humanity into the immigration system,” she said.

Figures obtained by the Red Cross through freedom of information requests show that of 14,733 asylum seekers who left detention in 2016, nearly half (42 per cent) had been detained for between 29 days and six months, with 10 per cent held for more than four months.

The charity recommends that the Home Office allows people to live in their communities while their immigration cases are resolved by replacing the systems of detention and reporting with end-to-end, community-based alternatives.

The Home Office told The Independent it had noted the recommendations from the report and was also carefully considering the contents of the Stephen Shaw review into the needs of vulnerable detainees, which is set to be published this month.

The warnings come amid mounting criticism of the UK’s immigration detention system, which currently holds around 26,500 people each year and around 2,500 at any given time. Britain is the only EU country without a statutory time limit for the detention of migrants.

Recent figures obtained by The Independent revealed at least one person a day needs medical treatment for self-harming in removal centres, while the prisons watchdog described conditions in the centres as “prison-like”.

In May the Home Office came under fire when it emerged that proven torture victims were also being detained.

Inspectors from HMI Prisons joined growing calls for a time limit, warning of a “deep level of emotional distress” and rising number of suicides, and noting that 50 per cent of detainees were eventually “released back into the community”.

The Home Office has paid a total of £21.2m, over the past five years, to unlawfully detained migrants. Critics claim this lays bare the department’s “chaotic decisions”.

A spokesperson said: “We have noted the recommendations from the report, while also recognising the small sample used – just 26 cases. Detention is used sparingly and we operate a strong presumption in favour of liberty.

“The adults-at-risk policy aims to ensure that those individuals who are most vulnerable to harm are less likely to be detained and that, if detention is necessary, it will be for the shortest time possible.”