Refugees raged against terrible conditions
Refugees locked up at an immigration centre near Heathrow raged against brutal conditions this week. Detainees at Harmondsworth removal centre were rightly furious at a lack of access to healthcare in the sweltering heat.
Harmondsworth, near Heathrow airport in west London, has a capacity of 676—the biggest of its kind in Europe. Along with its adjoining site of Colnbrook, it’s been at the centre of resistance in recent years.
“There are no windows—we can’t breathe here. It’s the same as a prison, with two people in a cell. It is unbearable,” a detainee from Iraq said. The cells are just two metres by two metres.
Artan arrived from Albania by small boat and has been at Harmondsworth for three months. He told the Guardian newspaper, “It’s a really dangerous situation in this centre.
“It’s very aggressive here, everyone breaking glasses and keeping small pieces in their hands and saying they want to harm themselves.” Yet the Home Office is still ploughing ahead with plans to detain and deport 3,000 people a month—ten times the current numbers.
Detainees reportedly broke down doors and raided the kitchen for food and water. “People are inside their rooms, locked. They’ve had no food since midday,” one of the protesters said.
Yuusuf from Somalia said, “I have a heart problem, a liver problem, so many medical problems, but doctors, they come along, they say, ‘He’s high, he’ll be alright.’ I need to go to hospital.
“People are suffering. They’re losing patience. They ignore us when we ask for help. They just lie to us.” A Home Office spokesperson said, “The Metropolitan police are also in attendance and we will make no further comment while the incident is being resolved.”
In November last year refugees at the centre were left without electricity, toilet facilities and hot water for two days.
Detainees weren’t allowed out of their cells for three days, which also sparked anger. The protests were shut down by Met riot police, who were called to the site. The right wing media and the Tories made a huge fuss about the “unacceptable violence” despite no one being injured.
Meanwhile in March, at the neighbouring Colnbrook removal centre, Colombian detainee Frank Ospina committed suicide, which sparked suicide attempts by other detainees.
Eleven people are recorded to have died after stays in Home Office immigration detention facilities between 2017 and 2021. The Tories don’t care about the lives of refugees who come to Britain.
From making crossings as dangerous as possible to keeping people in cramped hotels or unsuitable ex-military barracks, they want to make coming to Britain as miserable as possible.
Refugees are often portrayed as passive objects of government interventions. In fact they are people who both suffer appalling treatment but can also fight back and organise.
We should celebrate their resistance.
Two-thirds of refugees seeking family reunion in Britain that are initially turned down succeeded at appeal.
Despite family reunion being one of the only safe and legal routes into Britain, many applications are refused. Data show that 1,386 family reunion applications rejected by the Home Office were overturned on appeal between 2019 to 2022.
Rishi Sunak, home secretary Suella Braverman and the Tories constantly trump the “safe and legal” routes option to attack those who come via Channel crossings. But those safe and legal routes barely exist.
Safe routes are only available for refugees coming from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong.
Child refugees are set to be sent back to a notorious Brighton hotel where more than 100 children went missing. The Home Office plans to reopen the hotel that houses unaccompanied children despite concerns about the safety of those that would be kept there.
After huge numbers went missing earlier this year, public outrage led to the Home Office being forced to empty hotels of unaccompanied children.
Many were likely abducted by criminal gangs, which the Home Office still denies happened. The news of the planned reopening comes after immigration minister Robert Jenrick promised MPs in the Commons there would be “no unaccompanied young people in hotels whatsoever”.
But the Brighton hotel where 136 children went missing was set to reopen as early as Tuesday this week.
A message from a senior asylum official at the hotel said in a message, “Good news. We will be operational by the 27th of June. We can let you know numbers closer to the time once the youngsters start arriving.”
More than 400 unaccompanied children have gone missing in total from Home Office hotels, with 154 still missing in total.
Some 50 of these children are still missing from the Brighton hotel, where it’s feared that they have been kidnapped by criminal gangs.
Twelve children from the hotel were arrested last week after the authorities discovered they were working on cannabis farms. The children are believed to have been trafficked. One child said that they had been forced into slavery.
A worker in children’s services told the Guardian newspaper, “I don’t think it is a coincidence that these hotels were emptied after the scandal of the missing young people broke. Now public exposure has died down they’re actually reopening the very same place. It’s outrageous.”
Brighton and Hove Stand Up to Racism planned a demonstration outside Brighton Town hall this week so protesters could show their anger at this decision made by the Home Office.
Once again, the Tories’ lack of concern for the lives of vulnerable people is evident.
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