Deaths in the Detention System
October 3rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
“A combination of official torpor, detainee despair and the Kafkaesque nature of detention without trial has led in recent months to a growing number of deaths of individuals caught in what many say is the United Kingdom’s broken immigrant detention system.
… Little is known about the deaths: all that the Home Office will confirm is that on July 31, a 35-year-old male being held at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Center located outside London died. Neither his name, nationality nor the circumstances of his death were released.
Just days later, another unidentified man believed to have been facing imminent deportation was found hanged at Campsfield removal center near Oxford. Weeks earlier, a 47-year-old Pakistani migrant, Muhammed Shuket, died on his way to the hospital from the same immigration center, while a Jamaican immigrant who had overstayed his visa cut his own throat on a deportation flight from the UK to Jamaica in June (The man survived).
… Speaking on condition of anonymity, however, an official with the government’s internal legal department said that the United Kingdom’s immigration system is increasingly dysfunctional and the branches of the government dealing with it so moribund and riddled with low morale they are in near meltdown.
“There’s just a constant barrage of litigation from those either seeking redress for having been held illegally or separated from their children – and some people are held for years in legal limbo without knowing what’s going to happen to them,” he said. “I look at some of the cases that land on my table with growing regularity and am finding it disturbing.”
The UK is one of a mere handful of European countries that have not set a limit on how long they lock up immigrants scheduled for deportation – Ireland has one of 56 days; France a limit of 32.”
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My newest freelance piece. Read the rest at the excellent New America Media.
