Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) welcomes Yvette Cooper’s announcement that the Labour Party would introduce a time limit on immigration detention. We agree with Yvette Cooper that detention “can be deeply scarring”.
Adeline Trude of BID said:
“A time limit would help to reduce some of the worst abuses of the use of administrative detention in the UK. Indefinite immigration detention is damaging and unnecessary for all those who are detained under administrative powers.
“A time limit should apply to all detainees, not just some. Differential time limits mean differential safeguards, and will not make detention more effective for the Home Office, merely more punitive for one group of people”
In addition to a time limit, BID considers that all immigration detainees need judicial oversight to protect against arbitrary and unnecessary detention.
“The introduction of a time limit that excludes ex-offenders would change nothing for many of those who are already detained the longest, who in BID’s experience are usually ex-offenders”.
BID understands that it can be difficult to focus on the rights of people who have committed offences. But the reality is that ex-offenders in detention centres are often long-term lawful residents of the UK, with British partners and children. They have served their sentence. Systems are already in place to adequately manage in the community any foreign national ex-offenders who must leave the UK, until the time comes for them to leave.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/25/labour-vows-to-ban-indefinite-detention-of-asylum-and-immigration-applicants
