Place of detention

Author

Refugee Council Visit Website

Immigration Removal Centres (IRC)

There were 7 Immigration Removal Centres (IRC) during 2021 where immigration detention was implemented:

Source: Home Office

Short-Term Holding Facilities (STHF)

There are currently 3 residential Short-Term Holding Facilities (STHF), which can hold detainees for up to seven days, in addition to a small facility in Yarl’s Wood, where some people are detained for screening. Many airports or reporting centres have short-term holding facilities where people are held under detention powers for up to 24 hours. An inspection of the facilities receiving those arriving at the port of Dover, drew attention to the poor conditions in which new arrivals were held. [4]

Source: Home Office, Immigration statistics: Q4 2020, Detention (capacity courtesy of AVID detention)

Prisons

At the end of December 2021 3,110individuals were detained under Immigration Act powers in prisons in England and Wales.[5] It is not recorded whether any and if so how many of these people had at any point claimed asylum. Asylum seekers are normally detained in immigration removal centres (IRC) in preparation for removal together with other third-country nationals who are there for immigration reasons. They are not detained in prisons purely in order to process an asylum claim or to remove them after they have been refused asylum.

If someone who is serving a prison sentence claims asylum, including if they do so in response to a decision to deport them, they may continue to be detained in prison while their asylum claim is processed. There is no data presently available on the extent of this. The practice of holding immigration detainees in prison is problematic, as detainees in prison experience much greater barriers to accessing legal advice and basic information about their rights, particularly in isolated local prisons. There is no regular advice surgery as there is in the IRC, and detention of a person held under immigration powers in a prison is not governed by the Detention Centre Rules and Orders. This means that the detainee may have legal advice on their asylum claim if they can contact an adviser outside the prison, and if necessary obtain legal aid to fund the advice, but there is no on-site access to asylum advice.

There is an agreement between the National Offender Management Service and the Home Office for immigration detainees up to a specified limit (presently 600) to be held in the prison estate. Detention policy specifies the criteria for detaining a person in a prison for immigration reasons after they have served their criminal sentence, but the policy allows for people to be detained in prison ‘before’ consideration is given to transferring them to an IRC – thus allowing continued detention in prison without an obligation promptly to transfer to an IRC. It also expressly provides that, if prison beds available for immigration detention are not filled by those in the risk categories, those beds should be filled by immigration detainees who do not meet the criteria for detention in prison.[6]

A court case in 2019 established that it is not necessary for the safeguards for vulnerable immigration detainees in prisons to be equivalent to those in Immigration Removal Centres.[7] This case was overturned (in respect of the safeguards) by the Court of Appeal.[8]

[1]  The purpose of Yarl’s Wood changed during 2020 from holding women to men.

[2]  Tinsley House has temporarily ceased to hold immigration detainees.

[3] An additional 665v held in prisons.

[4]  HMIP inspection of Tug Have, Kent Intake Unit and Frontier House https://bit.ly/340UQPa.

[5]  Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees (AVID), Prison statistics, available at: http://bit.ly/1N0tKpz.

[6] Home Office, Enforcement Instructions and Guidance, Chapter 55.10.1.

[7] MR (Pakistan) and Ors, EWHC 3567 (Admin), Case No: CO/2701/2018 & CO/4233/2018, 20 December 2020, available at:  https://bit.ly/2UTJPbP .

[8]  MR (Pakistan) and Ors EWCA https://bit.ly/3nM1eRc.