The detention of asylum seekers in the UK: bail for immigration detainees
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knowledgements Thanks to the Canterbury and District Multicultural Association, Claire Alexander, Meridy Harris and Larry Ray.
author biography Kate Reed is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent, Canterbury. Her research and teaching interests are focused in the areas of social theory, gender, race and ethnicity and health and illness.
references Crawley, H. (2001) Refugees and Gender: Law and Process, Bristol: Jordan Publishing Ltd. doi:10.1057/palgrave.fr.9400079
the detention of asylum seekers in the UK: bail for immigration detainees Anna Jackson (BID) There are over 2,000 places in immigration detention in the United Kingdom.1 These places are not for people convicted of a criminal offence, but for people being held by the Immigration Service. Families with children under 18,2 pregnant women, victims of torture and the seriously ill are detained. People can be detained at any point in their asylum claim, including on arrival in the UK, and their detention could last for weeks, months or years. There is no ‘upper limit’ on the possible
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1 ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven’ White Paper, February 2002. This policy change was announced in a letter to BID in November 2001. 2 The three deten-
tion centres with family accommodation are Harmondsworth, Dungavel and Oakington. According to the IND press release 4/10/01, there are a total of 550 beds at Harmondsworth– 406 male, 72 female and 72 in family rooms. 3 Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) is a registered charity that prepares and presents bail applications to the Immigration Appellate Authority (IAA) on behalf of those detained under immigration legislation in the United Kingdom.
length of detention and, unless removal directions are set, there is no indication of how long someone might be detained. The majority of immigration detainees are detained in what the government has misleadingly renamed ‘Removal Centres’, in spite of the fact that many of the detainees have ongoing asylum and immigration cases and therefore cannot be removed. Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID)3 has even been contacted by people who had won their asylum appeal before an Adjudicator, but were still in a so-called ‘Removal Centre’. BID is a small charity that makes bail applications on behalf of immigration detainees, predominantly asylum seekers, who have had difficulty getting their legal representative to make a bail application. Almost all immigration detainees have the right to a bail hearing in the ‘immigration courts’, which are run by the Immigration Appellate Authority. A bail hearing is the opportunity for the detainee’s representative to argue that the person in detention should be released and for the Immigration Service to put forward their argument for continuing to detain the person. The person who makes the decision is called an adjudicator. Adjudicators are independent of the Immigration Service and Home Office. BID is often contacted by asylum seekers who have spent long periods in detention with no bail application b
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