The Home Office’s processes for investigating complaints of alleged incidents of staff and contractor misconduct towards immigration detainees has been held to be unlawful by the High Court, because of a failure to disclose the evidence relied on. The case is R (AK) v Secretary of State for the Home...
The 11th edition of the essential Macdonald’s Immigration Law & Practice has been published. The first edition was published by the late, great, Ian Macdonald QC in 1983 and the most recent edition in June 2021. Updating this comprehensive handbook is a huge and important undertaking, the general editors for...
The Upper Tribunal has made a declaration that the Home Office’s delay in considering further submissions was unlawful, after the Home Office “voided” the further submissions without telling the applicant. The case is R (D1527) v Secretary of State for the Home Department JR-2025-LON-001018. The applicant is an Egyptian national...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! On Tuesday last week the Home Affairs Select Committee heard oral evidence for their inquiry into asylum accommodation from witnesses including David Bolt, the interim Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (for a little while longer at least). The written evidence submitted to the inquiry has...
Following on from last year’s award of £203,995 made to a victim of abuse at Brook House, it seems the Home Secretary has missed the deadline of 29 September 2024 to make payment to the claimant, meaning that thousands more in interest is now payable. The conduct of pretty much...
The Home Office has settled the judicial review claims that seek an independent Article 3 ECHR compliant inquiry into events at Manston in 2022. The claims were brought by individuals detained at Manston in autumn 2022 when there were widespread reports and concerns around overcrowding and very poor conditions, and...
Barry returns and joins Sonia to run you through November on Free Movement. It was statistics galore for Sonia who covered the latest immigration, asylum and trafficking figures. A surprise statement of changes contained bad news for Colombians and Ukrainians. Barry was a really big fan of Colin’s review of...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Manston is back in the news after the Home Secretary withdrew her decision of September 2024 not to hold a statutory inquiry into what happened in 2022 when the Home Office “completely lost grip” on the centre. A judicial review that was due to be heard last...
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons has published a report of an unannounced inspection of Brook House immigration removal centre. The inspection took place between 5 and 22 August 2024 and does not make pretty reading. The last inspection took place in June 2022. Since then, of the four tests for...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The bad news is that we apparently have to tolerate yet another media contrived “small boats week”. The good news is that this is the exact opposite of a quiet news week and the US election will presumably drown out most other news, whatever...
In this episode of the podcast Barry does everyone a big favour by taking us through the autumn statement of changes in detail. Sonia and Barry also have a bit of a call to arms on discretionary grants of indefinite leave to remain and tackling the ten year route. The...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! There was big news on Friday as we heard that the Lord Chancellor has conceded the judicial review challenging inaction on legal aid fees for immigration and asylum work. Usefully, we have a fairly clear timetable for when action needs to be taken. The government has...
In Adegboyega v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWHC 2365 (KB), the High Court has awarded £203,995 to a victim of the abuse at Brook House immigration removal centre. The judgment is a vindication of the bravery of detainees who came forward to participate and give evidence...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Issues around the EU Settlement Scheme continue to make news, with the latest being the story of a Polish man who the Home Office was trying to remove despite his having lived here for 20 years and having applied twice to the EUSS. We are one year...
A year after the Brook House Inquiry published its report, the Independent Monitoring Board has published its annual report on the Gatwick detention centres (Brook House and Tinsley House) finding that safety has deteriorated in the past year. The report noted “a substantial increase in violence across both centres in...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! It looks like the government has lost in the High Court in Northern Ireland this morning (Ed: remember the newsletter goes out by email on Mondays – sign up below!), in a challenge to the Illegal Migration Act brought by the Northern Ireland...
The Home Office is proposing to change the Adults at Risk guidance in a way that will result in more vulnerable people being detained. On 30 April 2024 draft statutory Adults at Risk guidance was published and the Immigration (Guidance on Detention of Vulnerable Persons) Regulations 2024 will bring the...
Six months after the Brook House Inquiry published its report, the Home Secretary has responded. The response seeks to create distance from the events in 2017 that prompted the inquiry, as though it was an isolated incident, stating: “Further improvements have been made since the events of 2017 to uphold...
The Home Office has updated its “Allocation of asylum accommodation” guidance so that a list of people who were previously excluded from the Bibby Stockholm, Napier and the other ex-Ministry of Defence sites and from having to share a bedroom, can now be accommodated in these places. The euphemism being...
As the government’s Rwanda plan continues to court controversy, there is one area of their policy which by their measures could be seen to be succeeding: their efforts to stop Albanians from seeking refuge in the UK. Since 2019, the Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre...
The Home Office has conceded a judicial review and accepted that the ‘Detention Services Order 04/2020: Mental Vulnerability and Immigration Detention‘ was not operating effectively or as intended in ‘certain cases’, particularly in cases where there are concerns about a detained individual’s ability to make immigration related decisions. The concession...
This article provides an overview of some of the safeguards available for those who are held in immigration detention, focussing particularly on those who have been victims of torture. These safeguards are all the more important following the expansion of detention powers under section 12 of the Illegal Migration Act....
The Home Secretary has conceded the claims of two former immigration detainees relating to a power outage at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre (IRC), a detention centre next to Heathrow airport. The Home Secretary not only paid both claimants substantial amounts in damages for unlawfully detaining them, but also declared that...
Britain has a proud history of welcoming refugees. It also has a shameful history of hostility to refugees. Often exactly the same refugees at the same time. As with all real life and real history — as opposed to more transparently ideologically driven accounts — it is a complex story....
Our September roundup is here, featuring the latest statement of changes and new parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 being brought into force. We also discuss the Brook House inquiry, the Rwanda litigation, new immigration fees and illegal working fines and have an impromptu book club. If you listen...
This month Sonia and Colin cover the latest statement of changes, new parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 being brought into force, the Brook House inquiry, the Rwanda litigation, new immigration fees and illegal working fines. If you would like to claim CPD points for reading the material and...
Anyone who is liable to detention may be granted immigration bail. They may be released or allowed to live outside of detention, subject to certain conditions. Bail is granted by either the Secretary of State or the First-tier Tribunal. The main difference is that the Secretary of State may grant...
Staff working at Brook House immigration removal centre were verbally and physically abusive towards the people who were detained, including the use of extremely racist language. There were 19 incidents of inhuman and degrading treatment of people at a single removal centre over a period of just five months. That...
Yesterday, the third annual inspection from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) of ‘Adults at risk in immigration detention’ was published. On the same day, the Home Secretary discontinued the standing commission for this annual review. The report focuses specifically on the efficiency and effectiveness of Rule...
A damning report on healthcare and safeguarding in detention has concluded that the existing protocols for vulnerable detainees are “totally and utterly flawed”. The Medical Justice report Harmed not Heard focuses on the inadequacy of the Rule 35 safeguarding process, designed to identify vulnerable detainees for release. The research comes...
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We are now in the second week of the public inquiry investigating the abuse of Brook House immigration removal centre residents in 2017. This week the inquiry will hear evidence from whistleblower Callum Tulley, whose undercover footage exposed a culture of violence and racist abuse by staff, as seen on...
This is where we keep tabs on changes to UK immigration laws, rules and procedures brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve been trying to keep this post continually up to date rather than covering new coronavirus developments as separate blog posts that may become rapidly out of date. Material...
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Inspectors observing a Home Office charter flight taking asylum seekers to France and Germany have found that coronavirus precautions were not followed. The report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons also found that pain was deliberately inflicted on three highly distressed people, although it was unable to say whether the use...
The Home Office is planning to outsource asylum interviews to commercial contractors. A pilot programme designed to address the mounting backlog of asylum claims will see private outsourcing firms conduct interviews with often vulnerable asylum seekers. Refugee charities are likely to oppose the move, which was unveiled yesterday in a...
The High Court has refused a challenge to the conditions at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre in 2017 on all grounds. This is despite the Home Office having made a number of changes to the regime provided by G4S since then in response to criticism. The decision in R (Soltany)...
Data about the operation of Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules brought into the public domain by a Freedom of Information request lays bare the inadequacies of the current system for reporting vulnerabilities among immigration detainees. The data, obtained by Lewis Kett of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, demonstrates that Rule...
Outsourcing firm Serco is to take over two immigration removal centres run by rival G4S, the Home Office has announced. The Hampshire-headquartered company, which already runs the notorious Yarl’s Wood detention centre, will take over Brook House and Tinsley House from May 2020. The contract runs until 2028, with an...
Welcome to episode 71 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we explain the ramifications of the Supreme Court decision in Hemmati as well as recent developments in asylum and trafficking. The DeSouza case on the Good Friday Agreement has been reported by the Upper Tribunal, along with...
