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By Emily MacTaggart
In the isolated countryside of County Durham sits an Immigrant Removal Centre (IRC), one of the many facilities that form part of the immigrant detention system in the UK. Asylum seekers and other migrants are detained as part of Home Office administrative processes, under the powers of the Immigration Act. This includes those who could be waiting on an asylum claim, or those who have had asylum claims rejected and are therefore being held for deportation. But they could be held for various other arbitrary reasons, as some people who have lived in the UK for years find themselves detained. In the UK, there are 3 residential Short-Term Holding Facilities (STHFs), 7 Immigration Removal Centres and 13 Short-Term Holding Facilities. Now property of the Home Office and partnered with Serco who provides the facility’s public services, this particular site has a harrowing history of inhumane treatment but is currently functioning as an Immigration Removal Centre with space for 80 women since its opening in 2021. But it is set to become a detention site for men as of January 2024 to support the deterrence of "illegal entry" into the UK.
Firstly, we must address the dehumanising language that people within the asylum detention system are erased by. Their identities become property of a system that merely functions to enact their removal from a country they’re deemed unfit and unwelcome to inhabit once their status is denied, they are denied protection, or they enter by ‘illegal means’. Classifying a vulnerable person’s existence in this way at the final stages of an already traumatising path to the UK does not align with the moral and ethical code of the 1951 UNHCR Refugee Convention. Moreover, the detention centre is a place refugees and aslyum seekers cannot leave which limits a person’s rights to live freely and criminalises the refugee existence and plight, despite their inherent need to escape countries that could no longer support them. It is known that their living conditions are below satisfactory standards such as at the Manson migrant processing centre in Kent which is overcrowded and puts people’s wellbeing at risk.
In 2021 there were calls to pass the anti-Refugee Bill which was again recalled in the proposal of the anti-asylum bill in March 2023. The government seeks to deter people from finding protection, focusing their asylum system on resettlement schemes rather than reforming their system to support people more effectively in line with UNHCR legislation. The continued limitations placed on safe passage to the UK for most asylum seekers and refugees is making it increasingly harder to find legitimacy in asylum claims as irregular entry into the UK seems to go hand in hand with ‘illegality’ - a rather dangerous terminology for people whose safety has already been denied. In the past, there have been claims made by conservative leaders that people take advantage of the system in place, and that not all these people are vulnerable. Mediatic discourse surrounding the depiction of the refugee provokes unwarranted, demonising images of people seeking protection and safety. By fictionalising their lived hardship and merely denying them any sort of integration into our society those in power deflect any responsibility to accommodate for refugees.
But inflammatory discourse does not stop there. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s recent and perpetual statements of immigration being “illegal” and “uncontrolled” feeds into her populist narratives fuelled by solely political aims of self-advancement, only denying people of their human rights, and pushing them to a Third country, to Rwanda. This disregard for human rights is confirmed by the knowledge that Rwanda is a country in which such violations are rife. We are entering into a territory where politics is further permeating legislation of what should otherwise remain apolitical and uphold the inclusive and protective visions of the 1951 convention.
Further to this, the detention system is shrouded in mystery. Statistics on the movements of migrants within the detention system are not released (nor is it known if they are recorded). But it is known that asylum seekers or people who have been processed within the asylum system not only move around to different sites, but also exist in liminality; living both inside and outside of detention systems for indefinite amounts of time. Movements could be seen as something disrupting external aid and asylum claims, leaving people to be swallowed up by the system.
People are trying to fight back, however, for the dignity of those who have lived through traumatic events and deserve to be treated with respect. For example, local campaign group ‘No To Hassockfield’ (the previous name of the site) have been fighting for its closure since before it opened in December 2021. They hold monthly meetings, an organised demonstration every third Saturday of the month, and there is usually a presence at the gates of the site every Saturday.
Thanks to a Durham University Amnesty Society talk by a campaigner from ‘No To Hassockfield’, this article has been informed by first-hand involvement, as well as extra research of my own into the current state of the centre. What we can conclude, then, is that it is imperative we demystify the inner workings of the asylum system, to understand the unfair treatment that many asylum seekers are subject to. The goal is to project the work carried out by small organisations such as this to encourage a coordinated, collective effort on a national scale to change and reform the system. Protect the rights of these people who have already lived through so much danger. According to Home Office data: “45,755 people reached the UK in 2022 after crossing the English Channel in small boats”. Despite changes in legislation such as the most recent Illegal Migration Bill (July 2023), this does not alter the reality that people seek support from European countries to protect them. Changes to the system must be made starting by an increased awareness of how the system works. From this, we must fight in order that everyone be treated with dignity.
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