Hackney Half Heroes raise thousands for BID
Nine runners raised over £6,000 for BID’s work providing free legal advice for people detained under immigration powers.
On Sunday 22nd May nine runners took on the Hackney Half Marathon raising over £6,000 for BID’s work providing free legal advice to people locked up indefinitely in detention centres across the UK - enough to power our advice line for six whole months!
Sporting our bright blue kit, the team joined over 15,000 people as they ran an incredible 13.1 miles through London with fans, bands and DJs cheering them on from start to finish. We caught up with Kabir who took part and raised a whopping £2,129!
Why did you choose to fundraise for BID?
BID is one the most important groups campaigning against immigration detention in the UK.
The Home Office routinely detain vulnerable individuals, such as victims of torture, victims of trafficking and people with severe mental health problems. They also use immigration detention as a means to extend the custodial period for foreign nationals. This can also include people born in the UK/ who came to the UK as children but whose British status was never regularised (often due to extortionate nationality fees). This includes care-leavers and young people trafficked for the purposes of criminal exploitation (like county lines). These people have no ‘release date’ and are effectively detained indefinitely until they receive assistance. The story of immigration detention in this country is so incredibly dark.
I’ve represented immigration detainees for the last few years, and it’s probably one of the main reasons I ended up pursuing a career in law. Unfortunately, the demand for legal representation far outweighs the supply of legal aid firms able to assist, and this means many people remain detained without legal representation. BID takes on these cases, which are often the hardest. I wanted to fundraise for BID because their continued work is extremely important.
What was your highlight from the day?
The festival atmosphere, good weather (though hot to run in) and feeling quite intimidated at the start but very happy with my time (1h 40m) in the end.
What advice would you give to someone thinking about doing it next year?
I found the overall experience really rewarding. It’s been a good chance to talk to people outside of the field re BID and immigration detention. Many people don’t know quite how bad the situation is. I also found the whole experience of training for and running on the day really fun. I hadn’t run for a few months before I signed up. Getting back into it reminded me how good it is to relieve stress and how quickly your fitness can improve (I struggled to run 4k when I signed up 4 weeks ago!).
