End Child Detention Now

Clare Sambrook, 8 March 2010, on OpenDemocracy
About the author
‘He looks my age,’ says my nine-year-old son. ‘He looks sort of like me.’

There’s a picture on my screen: a small, slight boy who, for legal reasons, we’ll call M. He’s being cuddled by his 17 year old big brother Z. Both boys are smiling. They have been reunited after a long, hard separation.

Back home in war-torn Afghanistan their parents and a sister were killed. Big brother Z was first to come to Britain, traumatised, in November 2008. He has refugee status, studies for his GCSEs at school in Leicester.

This past October little brother M made his way here. Despite M’s size, his vulnerability, his boyish looks, officials said, you’re not 14, you’re an adult.

Instead of being taken into care, M was bounced around between three different adult hostels and a house-share with older men — and refused asylum.

Welsh Refugee Council staff were baffled and concerned. To them he looked every inch a traumatised boy.

Across the Afghani community and Red Cross networks, word rippled out: a boy called M badly needs to find his big brother Z.

The boys were reunited in February — and just in time, for if the big brother was, by official assent, just 17, then surely it must follow that the younger, smaller, slighter brother must be… younger.

M’s solicitor told his UKBA case-worker the good news and made an appointment. ‘I felt relieved,’ says Sabina Hussain, Welsh Refugee Council’s child advocacy officer, ‘I was looking forward to some stability for the brothers, and reuniting them for good.’

Last Monday, a bright, sunny St David’s Day morning, Sabina went with M to help him lodge his fresh asylum claim at the Border Agency’s Cardiff office.

M was arrested, and locked up in Cardiff Bay Police Cells, in extreme distress, dwarfed in man-sized padded clothing to protect him from self-harm. His seat was booked on a flight bound for Afghanistan, Tuesday 9 March.

In the dark early hours of Tuesday 2nd March, M was taken with an adult detainee by caged van on the 109 mile journey from Cardiff to Oxfordshire and Campsfield House, an adult detention facility run by the government’s commercial partner Serco. He shared a dormitory with seven men.

Welsh Refugee Council instructed solicitors, spearheaded an emergency campaign. Concerned citizens lobbied MPs and the Home Office. On Thursday morning, just days before the flight, Sabina said: ‘M is crying, “please help me, I’m scared, this place is no good, no sleep, no eat, I want my brother”. We are gravely concerned for his welfare.’

Solicitors appealed to the High Court to block M’s deportation. Sabina joined him in Campsfield House to await the Court’s decision.

Meanwhile, up in Glasgow, university professor Alison Phipps was asking friends to testify that she and her husband Robert Swinfen love their foster daughter Rima, that she loves them and that Rima really is 17, and not, as the authorities insist, over 20.

Fleeing religious persecution in Eritrea, shipwrecked off Italy, Rima Andmariam had sheltered in a derelict Milan squat, gone hungry, lost a finger, made her way to Britain and Cardiff — aged 15, according to her papers which Cardiff UKBA and social services refused to accept, insisting she was an adult.

Rima fled, moved from house to house, lived rough until twelve months ago when Alison and Robert took her in as their natural daughter. In May last year Rima was seized and locked up in Dungavel, a former prison.

When Rima’s solicitor lodged an application for judicial review, the Border Agency swept her out of its range, taking her 356 miles south by caged van to Yarl’s Wood, Serco’s notorious Bedfordshire detention centre. Another application for review, deportation averted. After seven days in Yarl’s Wood Rima was home again.

And then, last month, the day after Valentine’s Day, the government told Rima she would be forcibly deported to Italy within weeks. The family campaigns vigorously for clemency, fearing that each new dawn will bring the Border Agency’s arrest squad to their door.

Last Thursday afternoon the Hon Mr Justice Cranston stayed M’s deportation, ordered UKBA to free him and instructed Cardiff Council to provide accommodation suitable for a 14 year old boy, pending a full judicial review hearing. That night an exhausted M was released from Campsfield, driven back to Cardiff and placed with foster carers.

M’s fate and Rima’s hang in the balance — here, in Britain, a country where asking for sanctuary is a right, not a crime, and where, according to the government, every child matters.

Rima’s website is: www.letrimastay.org.uk <http://www.letrimastay.org.uk>

The national petition to end child detention is: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoChildDetention/

And there’s a petition just for doctors:
http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/stop-the-administrative-detention-of-children-and-families/signatures.html

Campaigners for the release of young Afghani orphan Mashal Jabari were delighted to hear that following a judicial review being lodged the judge agreed the following interim measures: until another full age assessment is completed, Mashal is to be considered 14 years of age and placed with a foster family in Wales where he has some support.

After being transported in a caged van with an adult detainee on the long journey from Cardiff to Oxfordshire, Mashall was placed in a dormitory with seven adult men. The UKBA planned to put Mashal on a flight to Afghanistan on Tuesday 9 March where his parents and sister had been killed for collaborating with the allied occupation forces. His older brother who has been given refugee status is currently taking his GCSE examinations in Leicester and is frantic with worry at the fate of his younger sibling.

Mashal was released from Campsfield House IRC at around 7.30 on Thursday evening and is now with his foster carers in Cardiff. A full update including details of further action and support that would help Mashal’s case to be resolved quickly and to assist him in beginning to recover from the trauma he has experienced in his own country and here in the UK will follow.

Thank you to everyone who sent letters, faxes and emails to the Home Secretary Rt. Hon. Alan Johnson MP, Evan Harris MP and their local MPs.

The response has been overwhelming, heartening and invaluable.

A 14 year old orphan has been arrested & detained in Campsfield Immigration Removal centre near Oxford, which exclusively holds adult males, and is due to be deported because the authorities claim not to believe he is under 18. His older brother has refugee status — the authorities accept that the older brother is under 18. . .As they say, do the maths.

Welsh Refugee Council today called on UKBA and Cardiff Council to act quickly to release Mashal Jabari, 14 years of age, from Campsfield detention centre, and to suspend removal directions until a full assessment of his age can be made. Welsh Refugee Council does not normally comment on individual cases, but in this instance believes that there are compelling compassionate grounds why this boy should be allowed to remain in the UK.

Zaki Jabar, aged 15, arrived in the UK alone and extremely traumatised in November 2008. He came from Afghanistan and when he left his father was missing presumed dead and his mother was sick. His family had been attacked after his father had given assistance to the American forces, and Zaki had seen his sister killed. He was placed in foster care in Leicester by Rutland Social Services and given Refugee Status. He is currently sitting his GCSEs. He was anxious to trace his younger brother Mashal.

Mashal Jabari arrived in the UK in October last year, and claimed asylum on arrival. By then he knew that both his parents were dead. He was assessed as being over 18 even though he said he was 14. He was sent to Cardiff where he was initially placed in the hostel for adult new arrivals. He was refused asylum in November. Welsh Refugee Council staff working in the hostel, who have now known Mashal for 4 months, have been extremely concerned because he seemed so clearly to be 14 rather than 18 and because he has been depressed and suicidal at the fear of being sent home to Afghanistan.

Mashal’s GP has stated in writing that Marshal appears to be under 18. Social workers in Cardiff are on record as saying that they think Mashal is under 18 following an initial assessment, but they have not carried out a full age assessment and so it has not been possible to persuade the Border Agency of his age.

Mashal said he had an older brother called Zaki who was also somewhere in the UK. Eventually, through a chance encounter, it has been possible for the 2 brothers to be reunited – they met last month in Leicester. Photos of the meeting show them with their arms around each other – Zaki the tall broad shouldered one, Mashal the small, boyish one.

Key findings from: The Children’s Commissioner for England’s follow up report to: The arrest and detention of children subject to immigration control.

Introduction & Executive Summary

• Sir Al Aynsley-Green reaffirms that in the UK ‘each year some 2,000 children are detained for administrative purposes for immigration control’.
• “…my contention remains that detention is harmful to children and therefore never likely to be in their best interests. There is a growing body of evidence, not least from the medical Royal Colleges, that documents that detention has a profound and negative impact on children and young people.”
• “we continue to argue that the detention of children for immigration control should cease”.

• “the UK Government must be held to account over its knowledge of what happens to families who are returned as a consequence of its immigration removals policy”.

Safeguarding

• Safeguarding children systems require urgent systemic review. This should be considered high risk.
• A Welfare Assessment using the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) must be undertaken prior to any decision to detain being made.
• A four-year-old boy was noted to appear withdrawn and traumatised on arrival. His mother’s overdose, and the removal of his father to another detention centre was not mentioned as a cause for his subsequent regressive behaviour.

• A child aged three had a fracture of the left humerus (upper arm) after a fall. She woke crying at night, unable to lift her left arm. She was seen by a nurse that night but not seen by a doctor until 14:00 the next day. It was not until 19:00, more than 24 hours after the incident that she left for the A&E department of Bedford Hospital.
• The enquiry team found examples in the Welfare Assessment Reports produced by Bedford Social Services instances where children’s needs were not properly addressed or where there was evidence that continued detention was detrimental to their welfare.
• These WAR reports are submitted to the Minister of State used and used as the basis for authorising further periods of detention beyond 28 days despite the fact that neither the children, their parents nor their advocates are allowed to see or challenge them.
• Welfare Assessment Reports use formulaic language such as ‘detention to be kept to the minimum’, which has no bearing on case manager’s decision to persist with detention.
• WAR authors engage in inappropriate attempts to persuade parents that they should voluntarily return to the country to which the UKBA is seeking to remove them and try to convince parents that they are responsible for their children’s detention and its negative impact.

Healthcare

Contrary to UKBA claims, standards of health care at Yarl’s Wood are not comparable to the NHS. Specifically:

• There is inadequate access to mental services, and a lack of monitoring of children’s mental state on arrival and at regular intervals while in detention.
• Chemoprophylaxis of children who are to be returned to malarial zones is very often not administered to children over 5, and insufficiently for younger children.
• Despite undertakings, malarial nets are still not issued to families returning to endemic malarial zones in Africa.
• There is evidence of inappropriate and harmful prescribing, which was not picked up through medical oversight systems at Yarl’s Wood.
• Women with HIV have been detained only to be released on the instructions of the European Court. The Commissioner recommends that children whose parent/s is/are HIV positive should never be detained.

Arrest

• There needs to be a systematic way of feeding back children’s comments on the arrest process to enforcement teams.
• UKBA appear to be no longer using caged vans. There appears to be more use of separate vehicles to transport children and their parents to and from Yarl’s Wood.
• Only 3/14 children said that they knew what had happened to their property after arrest, many were similarly unaware of the fare of their pets.
• Children reported how the arrest process was deeply embarrassing and made them feel like criminals – particularly when they were physically escorted from their homes in the sight of neighbours.
• “They told us we were going to a hotel not a prison and then they locked us up.” (Girl aged 6).
• A number of parents reported to us that force was used during arrest operations, particularly when children are being escorted to the awaiting vehicle.

Decision to detain or to continue detention

• Local enforcement officers are supposed to ensure that ‘all barriers to removal’ are cleared prior to booking detention space at Yarl’s Wood, but 11 million found no evidence that this system is audited, checks were not properly made on case files thus increasing the risk of prolonged detention.
• “[T]he records we saw indicated that detention sometimes continued for up to 70 days before release was authorised”.
• Eight percent of parents interviewed had no memory of being provided with information about assisted voluntary return.
• The requirement for ministerial authorisation to prolong detention of a child beyond 28 days has been described by UKBA as a ‘safeguard’. The fact that such authorization has never been refused raises questions about the way in which the process is applied and therefore of its safeguarding value.
• Where removal had not been effected within 48 hours, a judge should review whether continued detention is lawful and appropriate.
• Very few cases in the 11 Million sample resulted in a period of detention of under 1 month and typically most lasted between one month and two months.
• The majority (12/21) of cases were returned to the community.
• There should be an independent review of why some children remain detained for long periods.

Appropriateness of removal

The length of time a child has lived in the UK should inform the decision on whether or not to enforce removal. This accords with the ‘best interests’ principle enshrined in children’s legislation and the UNCRC. The current threshold of seven years of residence for a child before settlement is considered needs formally reviewing.

In an adjournment debate called by  the Conservative MP for Bedfordshire North-East, Alastair Burt, the Home Office Minister, Meg Hillier, told the House of Commons that in the financial year 2008-09, 1,116 children entered detention. She went on to report that ’some 539 of those children, slightly fewer than half, were removed, and 629 were released’-no fewer than 53.8% of all the children who had been detained.

Although the government issued its customary health warning that these figures are based  on ‘management information’ and therefore not subject to the detailed checks that apply to the publication of national statistics, this nevertheless confirms the fact that the detention of families is not being used when the independent courts have determined that the parents or children have no lawful right to remain, but as an arbitrary instrument of policy in order to drive up removal figures.

Despite reassurances to Parliament that the detention of children and families would be used for ‘the shortest time possible’, as Diane Abbott MP pointed out the average length of detention has continued to grow. According to the Minister, the average length of detention for children was 16 days in 2008-09, which is double the figure for 2007. The snapshot figure for 30 September 2009, found that 25 children had been detained for seven days or fewer, five for eight to 14 days, five for 15 to 28 days and ten for 29 or more days but less than two months. No figures were provided on the proportion of children who may have been subject to re-detention in the previous 12 months.

Ms Hillier, conceded that a child going through this process [of being woken in the early hours of the morning by complete strangers in uniforms and forcibly driven in a locked van to an immigration removal centre] ‘will find it very challenging’. Alastair Burt  asked if the Minister was ’somewhat painting a picture that parents are making a deliberate choice to go into detention and have their children with them as if the alternative were an easy one’.

I would like her to recognise that for many parents, that choice is not easy at all. That is the dilemma in which they are caught and which the system has somehow to try to deal with – Alastair Burt, MP

The debate had been called by the Conservative Deputy Chief Whip, whose constituency includes Yarl’s Wood following a protest of women hunger strikers on Monday 8 February, during which 70 women were locked inside a hallway in the women’s wing of the removal centre without access to toilet facilities for several hours. One woman suffered a serious asthma attack, and the four alleged organisers of the protest have been sent to HMP Holloway. None of the women who were removed from Yarl’s Wood have been charged with any offences. Up to 5o women remain on hunger strike after more than 10 days.

The Minister was unmoved by the protests or the plight of families facing imminent deportation: ‘…many people will choose anything rather than willingly return to a situation. That can be for all sorts of reasons, and not just because they feel in physical danger. In the end, the parents make the choices that face them, however difficult they are, so some responsibility needs to lie there’.

In other words, it is the fault of the parents that their children are locked up, not the government or its agents who arrest and imprison them. However, the UKBA’s persistent claims that it always acts humanely and within the law are coming unstuck as a growing number of decisions by the independent courts are finding the Home Office guilty of wrongfully imprisoning asylum seeking families. Meanwhile hundreds of children continue to have their lives blighted by our country’s ‘firm but fair asylum and immigration system’.

1 February 2010

As Bishop of Ripon and Leeds I am aware of the impact of removal and detention on those who experience it as well as those left behind, in our schools, communities and congregations. I welcome the initiative of the End Child Detention Now Campaign.

The Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, representing the Urban Bishop’s Panel of the Church of England, has issued a statement in support of the End Child Detention Now campaign.

The Statement, issued to coincide with the churches’ celebration of The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, February 2nd, condemns the detention of the children of asylum seekers as ” a shameful practice” which must be halted. It calls on the Secretary of State to introduce “humane-community based arrangements for children and families which recognise the need to put the welfare of children first”.

Bishop Packer, who has spoken on the issue in the House of Lords, and worked with families of asylum seekers in Leeds, says in the statement that detention of children, “often in sudden and alarming circumstances leaving behind friends, toys and personal possessions …”, is a distressing experience which must be halted.

Read the bishop’s full statement on child detention.

You can read and sign the End Child Detention Now petition to the Prime Minister here.

The Guardian newspaper in its online edition, carries a report by Diane Taylor and Hugh Muir highlighting the shocking allegations of a former caseworker, at the UKBA office in Cardiff. The former UKBA employee, Louise Perrett, claimed that asylum seekers were mistreated, tricked and humiliated by staff working for the UK Border Agency. Ms Perrett reveals how

• staff kept a stuffed gorilla, a “grant monkey”, which was placed as a badge of shame on the desk of any officer who approved an asylum application
• boys from African countries who said they had been forcibly conscripted as child soldiers were made to lie down on the floor and demonstrate how they shot at people in the bush
• one method used to determine the authenticity of an asylum seeker claiming to be from North Korea was to ask whether the person ate chop suey
• interviews were conducted without lawyers, independent witnesses or tape recorders

One manager said of the asylum-seeker clients: “If it was up to me I’d take them all outside and shoot them.”

Another told her this was to be expected, adding: “No one in this office is very PC. In fact everyone is the exact opposite.”

Home Affairs Select Committee Chair, Keith Vaz said: “I am deeply concerned by a number of ex-UKBA workers who have spoken out about flaws in the points-based system and behaviour such as this. I will be writing to the chief executive, Lin Homer, to discover what steps are being taken to remedy this culture of disbelief and discrimination.”

Bolivian asylum seekers were falsely imprisoned and children traumatised after being held at centre.

Esther Addley, The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010.
A refugee has won a settlement of £100,000 from the Home Office after it admitted falsely imprisoning her and her children at an immigration detention centre.

Carmen Quiroga, originally from Bolivia, spent 42 days at Oakington detention centre in Cambridgeshire with her son and three daughters, aged between three and 11, in what her solicitor describes as “appalling conditions” that were unsuitable for children, and despite the fact that a judicial review into her asylum plea was continuing for much of that period.

On one occasion Quiroga was struck by a contracted security guard when she failed to maintain eye contact, as the children looked on

In what is thought to be one of the highest payments for a case of this nature, the high court today approved the settlement, offered as compensation for the unlawful detention in 2004 and for serious psychological injuries that it accepted the children had suffered. Such was the distress they experienced that six years later the family have required “significant psychiatric help” to overcome it.
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Re-posted from the Stoke-on-Trent Sentinel, January 23 2010.

“..the handling of this case as a whole, both prior to and following the bringing of judicial review, fails in several respects to meet the requirements of both the public interest in an efficient immigration system and the protection of individual rights”.

- Judge David Elvin

A FAMILY of asylum seekers are in line to receive tens of thousands of pounds in damages after they were unlawfully detained for three weeks.

A High Court judge yesterday ruled that Fred Nukagem, and his wife and children, were held for too long prior to a planned deportation to Cameroon due to the “procedural ineptitude” of immigration authorities.

Negotiations are now underway over how much should be paid to Mr Nukagem.

And the legal team for the 38-year-old, from Middleport, is also hoping to reach an agreement over a compensation settlement for his wife and three children.

Solicitor Hani Zubeidi, of London-based Fadiga and Co, said: “We are looking at tens of thousands of pounds because, quite frankly, this is a shocking case.”

Mr Nukagem, who says he and his family will be killed for political reasons if they return to Cameroon, claimed asylum after initially arriving in the country in 2003 as a student and later working illegally.

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