The Multiple Exclusions of Immigration Detainees in UK Prisons  

Guest post by Rudy Schulkind and Alice Troy-Donovan. Rudy is an Advocacy Officer at RAMFEL and previously worked as a Policy and Research Manager at Bail for Immigration for Detainees (BID) for 5 years. Alice is a researcher interested in detention and asylum and is currently based in northern Greece working for Mobile Info Team.  

At the end of June 2023, there were 254 people detained in UK prisons under immigration powers. These are non-British citizens who remain locked in prison following the completion of their term to face deportation proceedings. Many people are told just days or hours before their planned release. One man interviewed by the HM Prisons Inspectorate in 2022 described the shock of this moment: “I was not expecting it, I didn’t know they could do this… I felt very, very bad”.  

The significant reduction in detention in prisons in recent years (down from 665 people at the end of 2021) is testament to the work of organisations such as Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), who relentlessly challenge the practice through legal casework and advocacy. While the total number of people detained under immigration powers in detention centres across the country is far larger – over 2,000 people at the end of June 2022 and set to increase – people held in prisons under immigration powers are probably the most marginalised detained migrant population in the UK. There has been a consistent and aggressive erosion of their rights in recent years, including their access to legal mechanisms to challenge detention and deportation.  

In 2022, Rishi Sunak pledged to double the number of so-called foreign national offenders deported from the UK, while the now shelved ‘Bill of Rights Bill’ sought to further diminish the right to appeal deportation on the basis of family life. Those facing deportation have been consistently demonised in politics and the media - making it extremely challenging to galvanise public sympathy or solidarity and advocate for their rights. In the sections below we explore the history of prisons used for immigration detention in the UK, and highlight three overlapping and interacting modes of exclusion which block foreign nationals in prisons from accessing justice.  

The growing use of prisons for immigration detention   

Since the 2007 UK Borders Act, the Home Office has been required to automatically pursue deportation action against any foreign national who receives a 12-month custodial sentence or spends 12 months incarcerated over a 5 year period. This includes those who grew up or were born in the UK and would be British citizens were it not for the UK’s unfair and restrictive citizenship laws. 

Those individuals had legal aid to challenge deportation until cuts in 2013 removed legal aid funding for non-asylum immigration work. 

In 2014, changes introduced under the Immigration Act 2014 added additional hurdles to those challenging deportation on the basis of their family or private life – requiring a parent to demonstrate that deportation would be ‘unduly harsh’ to their child (which Home Office guidance defines as ‘excessively cruel’). Put another way, this ugly corner of British law permits, even requires, cruelty to children. This catch 22 is made yet more inescapable by the fact that many people in this situation are locked up by the Home Office in prison for months after their release date, without a time limit, judicial oversight or access to legal advice.  

The multiple exclusions of foreign national offenders:  

1. Physical isolation   

Legal advice for immigration detainees is a geographical lottery. There is no automatic access to on-site immigration legal aid providers in prisons, and strong financial disincentives to providers travelling to prisons if they cannot establish whether a case is meritorious beforehand. In March 2021, only 21 out of 40 prisons holding 5+ immigration detainees were within a 25 km radius of a legal aid provider (see this map created by the authors – all red dots are prisons which do not have a legal aid provider within a 25 km radius). In 2022, the HM Prisons Inspectorate found huge discrepancies in staff understanding and support available to detainees across different prison. “Immigration detainees’ experiences depended too much on where they were held,” it concluded.  

During the coronavirus pandemic, physical isolation worsened for all prisoners, with the well-documented practice of locking prisoners in their cells for 23+ hours per day, often for months at a time. Despite amounting to prolonged solitary confinement - a practice which is banned by the UN due to the immense harm that it causes - chronic understaffing has left prisons increasingly reliant on this practice, which continues albeit more sporadically in certain UK prisons. BID’s 2022 report found that 74% of participants were locked in their cell for 22 to 24 hours per day.  This poses particular problems for those detained under immigration powers who, unlike time-serving prisoners, have to take proactive steps to secure release.  

2. Restricted access to legal advice and representation   

In 2022, a BID survey found that 70% of respondents detained in prisons do not have an immigration legal representative, and only 11% had received 30+ minutes of immigration advice in prison. Given the lack of on-site advice provision, many rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from other prisoners or adverts in the prisoner newspaper, Inside Time, to source a lawyer. A 2015 HM Prisons Inspectorate report found that 31% of detainees in Immigration Removal Centres said it was easy to get bail information, compared to just 6% of those in prisons. This is compounded by the scarcity of support organisations or any targeted provision for foreign nationals. Finally, the lack of internet access in prisons hinders legal research for detainees representing themselves and makes contacting the Home Office and complying with its systems extremely challenging.  

“I can’t get a lawyer. I don’t know how to find out. I don’t have any money, and you can’t get legal aid in prison” (interviewee quoted in HMIP report)  

3. Barriers to communication   

Without a mobile phone or internet access, it is much harder for long-resident foreign nationals to appeal deportation on family or private life grounds, as “good communication allows them to contact friends and family and gather evidence to show the strength of their family and social ties in the UK” (HM Prisons Inspectorate 2015). Respondents in BID’s 2022 report shared that access to legal advice was virtually impossible without assistance from outside which regular contact with family and friends. Moreover the lack of internet access in prisons hinders legal research for people representing themselves and makes contacting the Home Office and complying with its systems extremely challenging. 

These overlapping exclusions obstruct and prevent access to justice for people already facing a cruel double punishment. The corollary is people suffering immense anguish and harm in custody, families permanently separated without the chance to fight their case, and a stain on the UK’s human rights record.  

“I feel like the Home Office don’t know anything about me and they don’t see any of the things I have done. I want them to come and see me, it would be helpful if they can explain to me why this is happening, right now I am in the dark and I don’t know what is going on with my life… I spend my nights without sleep because I am not knowing what is happening and I don’t know when it will end.” interviewee quoted in HMIP report.  

Any comments about this post? Get in touch with us! Send us an email, or post a comment here or on Facebook. You can also tweet us.