News

Katie Close Consultant Parliamentary Officer  Detention Action Last night the House of Lords voted for the amendment to introduce a statutory 28 day time limit for immigration detention. Speeches were made by Baroness Hamwee, Baroness Bull and Baroness Meacher all of whom put the case powerfully for the introduction of [...]

Jonathan Ellis, project director at Detention Forum, offers a few individual reflections     With the Home Secretary promising an overhaul of the asylum system in the UK, it is timely to take stock to reflect on why it is so important that we have a policy which allows people [...]

Katie Close Consultant Parliamentary Officer  Detention Action   On Monday the House of Lords debated the amendment to introduce a time limit at Committee stage of the Bill. Baroness Hamwee introduced the amendment with her usual eloquence and there followed contributions from Baroness Lister, Baroness Ludford, Baroness Jones, Lord Judd, [...]

Detention Forum was really keen to offer our support to the recent inter-agency letter to the Immigration Minister, Chris Philp MP. Along with 31 other organisations that support and advocate for people going through immigration detention, we wanted to raise our concerns about the nature of the ‘return to normal’ [...]

Anna Pincus Director, Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group   During the time of Covid-19, fear has felt corrosive. Loss of agency has been a defining characteristic of life. For those in detention, total loss of freedom is the norm underpinned by a terrible loss that is central to the dehumanising nature [...]

After the summer recess, the Immigration Bill is due to re-appear in the House of Lords next week. After the disappointment of seeing the Time Limit amendment fail to win a majority in the House of Commons, we remain hopeful for this issue gaining more support in the Lords. We [...]

Jerome Phelps Strategy and advocacy consultant, and former Director of International Detention Coalition and Detention Action   The summer of 2013 was a very different world. President Obama was on course to sweep to a second term. ‘Brexit’ was a neologism likely to be forgotten. Mayor of London Boris Johnson [...]

Dr Anna Lindley Senior Lecturer, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, University of London   Risk is a key ‘organizing concept’ for immigration control regimes and often comes up when talking about immigration detention. As one UK detention officer put it, ‘We are protecting the community’. Yet there is also abundant [...]