All Articles: Detention
Home Office has no power to vary High Court bail conditions
In R (BVN) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 1159 (Admin) the High Court has confirmed that the Secretary of State has no power to interfere with the conditions attached to a grant of High Court bail. It is an unusual issue and ...
23rd May 2022Damning report finds “systemic failures” of detention centres to identify harm
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 Ru ...
4th May 2022Telephone reporting for people on immigration bail
From April 2022 the Home Office has moved to using telephone reporting as a mainstream reporting alternative. This follows on from changes implemented on an emergency basis during the pandemic lockdown and sustained lobbying by migrants rights groups. ...
3rd May 2022Afghan refugee detained for 98 days wins High Court false imprisonment appeal
Ali v The Home Office [2022] EWHC 866 (QB) is a successful appeal against the Central London County Court’s decision to dismiss the false imprisonment claim of a recognised Afghan refugee, detained for 98 days under the Detained Fast Track proc ...
21st April 2022Mandatory GPS tagging for people on immigration bail
Last August, the provisions in Schedule 10 of the Immigration Act 2016 providing for foreign national offenders liable to deportation to be subject to mandatory tagging as a condition of immigration bail were commenced. This provision was designed to ...
21st February 2022Detention age assessment policy tightened
On 7 February 2022 the Home Office updated Detention Services Order 02/2019 on Care and management of Post Detention Age claims. This policy sets out the approach to age dispute cases in immigration detention and applies to Home Office staff and its c ...
15th February 2022High Court dismisses concerns about legal aid in detention centres
The High Court has thrown out a challenge arguing that the free legal advice given to migrants in detention centres is rubbish. Mr Justice Calver held that statistical evidence that many legal aid firms provide a poor service was unreliable and that & ...
18th January 2022Home Office immigration bail powers upheld
In Kaitey v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1875 the Court of Appeal has upheld the High Court’s decision that the power to set immigration bail exists even when a person cannot be lawfully detained. As Alex commented at t ...
14th December 2021One month a reasonable time to source bail accommodation during pandemic
In R (Babbage) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2995 (Admin), the High Court found that a person with an extensive offending and adverse immigration history who posed high risks of re-offending and absconding was unlawfully det ...
18th November 2021Progress stalls on vulnerable immigration detainees
On 21 October 2021 the Home Office published the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s (ICIBI) second annual inspection of the Adults at Risk policy, alongside its response. The report itself is an impressive piece of work and pro ...
28th October 2021Government must obey court orders even if invalid, Supreme Court holds
The Supreme Court has this morning handed down judgment in R (Majera) (formerly SM Rwanda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] UKSC 46. The appeal, as Lord Reed states in his opening sentence, raised a “question of constitutional ...
20th October 2021Systems failure denied immigration detainee his HIV meds, judge finds
The Home Office has been found in breach of its legal duty to protect HIV patients in its custody after officials left a Congolese man without his daily medication for several days. In what Mr Justice Bourne described as an “unedifying” sp ...
2nd August 2021Non-Europeans can be detained for longer, EU Court of Justice decides
An eight-month detention period for EU citizens is disproportionate, the Court of Justice of the European Union has decided. The case is C-718/19 Ordre des barreaux francophones and germanophone and Others. The case originated in the Belgian courts. L ...
25th June 2021The Glasgow immigration raid was arbitrary: as are all such raids
From the outside looking in, initial immigration enforcement decisions like that in Glasgow last week to detain a person often seem opportunistic and random rather than strategic. The result is that the ‘wrong’ people end up being detained. We kno ...
16th May 2021Congolese man unlawfully detained for three and a half years
To a person in detention, particularly in prison, every day of freedom lost matters and the Defendant needs to be able to justify it. In this case I think that principle became lost to sight. So says the High Court in the case of Louis v Home Office [ ...
10th May 2021Lack of Rule 35 process in prisons is unlawful, Court of Appeal finds
The judgment of the Court of Appeal in MR (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for Justice & Others [2021] EWCA Civ 541 marks a major step forward in the battle over the use of immigration detention in prisons. The court has decided that the absence of ...
19th April 2021System for investigating deaths in immigration detention declared unlawful
In R (Lawal) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (death in detention, SoS’s duties) [2021] UKUT 114 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal has decided that the Home Office’s policies on the death of immigration detainees are contrary to its proced ...
15th April 2021Human trafficking to be covered by the Adults at Risk policy
The Home Secretary has laid a new draft of the Adults at Risk statutory guidance before Parliament. The new version marks a significant change in how trafficking victims fit within the policy framework for detaining vulnerable people. At present, the ...
6th April 2021Lack of legal advice for migrants in prison ruled “discriminatory”
The High Court in SM v Lord Chancellor [2021] EWHC 418 (Admin) has held that free legal advice must be made available to immigration detainees held in prisons, bringing access to lawyers into line with the legal advice scheme operating in immigration ...
26th February 2021Home Office given 48 hours to release immigration detainee despite coronavirus
In an interim relief decision the High Court has ordered the release of an immigration detainee within 48 hours, indicating that judges will not allow the Home Office to use the pandemic as cover to justify long “grace period” delays in re ...
10th February 2021Indian man detained for 13 months under immigration powers loses bid for release
The High Court has upheld the continued detention of an Indian national in a Category B prison on the basis of a high risk of absconding and serious criminal convictions, despite detention already lasting well over a year. The case is Singh v Secretar ...
3rd February 2021High Court bail for vulnerable detainee
The High Court has ordered the release on bail of a detainee who is subject to deportation action but suffers from serious mental health problems. Full judgments at the interim relief stage are relatively unusual so R (RS) v Secretary of State for the ...
20th January 2021Eight-month delay in sourcing bail accommodation “reasonable” during pandemic
In the case of Mahboubian v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 3289 (Admin), the High Court decided that the Home Office couldn’t be held responsible for an eight-month delay in finding immigration bail accommodation for a high-r ...
14th December 2020County Court takes dim view of Fast Track detainee’s false imprisonment claim
In Ali v Home Office EW Misc 27 (CC) [2020], the County Court robustly dismissed a false imprisonment claim brought by an Afghan refugee who was detained for 98 days under the Detained Fast Track process in 2015. County Court cases are rarely report ...
3rd December 2020Wildly unlawful bail policy gets only minor tweaks, for now
The Home Office has released new interim guidance on the immigration bail accommodation system. The 15-page document introduces a couple of minor changes to address the High Court’s damning criticism of the department’s bail accommodation poli ...
4th November 2020Court of Appeal backs judge who ordered asylum seeker brought back to the UK
The Court of Appeal has rejected an attempt by the Home Office to overturn a High Court order to bring an asylum seeker who had been removed under the unlawful Detained Fast Track system back to the UK. The case is R (PN (Uganda)) v Secretary of State ...
29th September 2020Bail accommodation system ruled “systemically unfair”
The Immigration Act 2016 brought about extensive changes to the support available to people on immigration bail. Since those changes came into force in January 2018, tens of thousands of people have struggled against the harsh new system, which has ke ...
1st September 2020Challenge to Brook House detention conditions rebuffed by High Court
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 criticis ...
25th August 2020What is the Adults at Risk policy?
After the Hardial Singh principles, the Adults at Risk policy is the most important source of law for securing the release of people from immigration detention. It provides a detailed framework for assessing the vulnerability of detainees and balancin ...
5th August 2020Rule 35 isn’t working – and there’s data to prove it
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, ...
21st July 2020Immigration bail legislation means what it says, High Court confirms
In Kaitey v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 1861 (Admin), the High Court has confirmed that the power to set immigration bail conditions exists even when a person cannot be lawfully detained in compliance with the Hardial Singh ...
16th July 2020What are the Hardial Singh principles?
This post explains the Hardial Singh principles, which are the most important limitation on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers. The Hardial Singh principles take their name from the case of R (Hardial Singh) v Governor of Durham Prison ...
9th July 2020Judge intervenes to end Home Office dithering over bail accommodation
In the case of Merca v SSHD [2020] EWHC 1479 (Admin) the High Court ordered the Home Office to release the claimant within four days. One week and two extension of time requests later, the Home Office has now complied with that order. Mr Merca, detai ...
23rd June 2020