"Detention & deportation are brutal & useless for anything but enriching private companies that enact it."
The government has now announced the latest part of its immigration policy following the cancellation of the Tories’ Rwanda scheme. The Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said she wanted to introduce a ‘better controlled’ immigration system in order to tackle ‘the chaos that has blighted the system for far too long’.
As part of the plans, Cooper has set a goal of deporting 14,000 more people by the end of 2024.
To deliver its plans to ramp up deportations, the government has confirmed it intends to re-open two immigration detention centres – Campsfield in Oxfordshire and Haslar in Hampshire. This would provide an additional 290 beds in the UK’s detention estate.
Cooper’s announcement has faced heavy criticism from experts on migration and campaigners.
Zoe Gardner, a migration expert, said: “Yvette Cooper’s borders announcement today is a betrayal of everyone who voted for change. Ten days since racists attacked asylum seekers & mosques & today Labour announce they’re ramping up the failed narrative that we can just get rid of the people we don’t want here.
“Over last decades we vastly increased immigration detention capacity. More & more people locked up, while we try to get rid of them, although in most cases we don’t do that. They experience that brutality. We pay the immense cost. And what changes? Absolutely nothing.”
She went on to suggest that the government should instead be introducing safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to make claims in order to reduce the number of people making unsafe journeys to the UK, for instance by crossing the English Channel by small boats.
She later added: “Detention & deportation are brutal & useless for anything but enriching private companies that enact it.”
Local campaigners in Oxford have also criticised Cooper’s announcement. The Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed have called an emergency protest in the city later today in response to the confirmation that the government intend to re-open the Campsfield detention centre.
Bill MacKeith, from the Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed said: “The re-opening of Campsfield was expressly stated in summer 2022 to be in order to meet the need for additional detention places arising from the Rwanda flights plan announced in Boris Johnson’s in April 2022 speech. With the end of that plan, the need for additional detention places ceases to exist.
“Immigration detention centres are not full. Derwentside, near Durham, has never held even a half of its capacity of 90. Extra places are not needed even if the number of deportations was to increase. The ‘detention estate’ should shrink, not expand.
“The misery that is immigration detention is well evidenced locally, and most recently by the inspection report on the two detention centres at Heathrow (‘the worst that HMI Prisons has found in its IRC inspections’).
“Alternatives to detention exist and we call for the government to continue the programme of pilots that was introduced with the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.”
Cooper’s announcement has also faced criticism from within the Labour Party. Sheffield Labour Councillor Minesh Parekh accused the government of ’emboldening the far-right’ with the plans.
Parekh said: “Expanding immigration detention and deportations – a few weeks after far-right riots calling for that – emboldens the far-right. Millions voted against the cruelty of the previous government and its mistreatment of people seeking sanctuary. They should not be so quickly disregarded.”
Other political parties have also joined the criticism. The Green Party’s migration spokesperson Benali Hamdache said: “For 14 years the Tories eroded the right to asylum in this country. After many bills in parliament, many rightful refugees are being rejected.
“Labour, rather than looking at the unfair system, are doubling down More hostile environment. More deportations. It’s not right or just.”
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
Image credit: Simon Dawson / Number 10 – Creative Commons
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