The UK Home Office has released statistics revealing that over 444 immigrant children have been detained since December 2010, which is when the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg pledged to end the detention of all children in immigration centres by May 2011. The statistics starkly contradict an announcement by Nick Clegg last year that he was proud to have ended child detention as part of a Liberal Democrat manifesto promise.
Click here to view the relevant Home Office statistics.
Click here to read the October 2012 article by Nick Clegg claiming to have ended child detention.
Immigration removal centres are holding centres for foreign nationals awaiting decisions on their asylum claims or awaiting deportation following a failed application. According to the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford the UK has one of the largest networks of immigration detention centres in Europe, with 2000 to 3000 migrants detained at any given time.
The latest statistics prompted criticism from child protection experts and activists. Matthew Reed, Chief Executive of the Children’s Society, warned of the “serious harm” that can be caused by such detention. According to Dr. Madelyn Hicks, psychiatrist, who spoke at the launch of the Campaign to End the Immigration Detention of Children, in March 2012 at the UN Human Rights Council, “Substantial evidence shows that detention, even for short periods, can seriously damage the mental health and development of children – from infancy through to teenage years”.
Click here to view an article in the Independent about the issue.
By way of comparison, the Republic of Ireland detains several hundred people a year on immigration violations. This jurisdiction does not have dedicated immigration detention centres, so migrant detainees are confined in prisons. According to the Global Detention Project, detainees are often kept for a brief initial period of time at a Garda Síochána station before being either returned to the carrier on which they arrived, or transferred to one of the nine prisons specified in immigration regulations. Non-citizens who are refused entry must “as soon as practicable” be brought before a District Court judge to determine whether the person should be kept in detention. Although a person should be detained for no more than 21 days, a judge can decide to renew this 21-day period indefinitely (Refugee Act 1996, as amended by the 2003 Immigration Act). There is no legal limit to the detention period. Asylum seekers are prohibited from working and held in residential institutions under the direct provision system.
Proposals to reform Irish immigration law have long been delayed. The Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill was initially introduced in 2008 and again in 2010 but has yet to pass through the Oireachtas.