What Is Immigration Detention?

When people are detained under immigration powers, they are held for administrative purposes in prison-like detention centres, with no time limit. Detention is inefficient, expensive and harmful: it damages the lives and mental health of people detained, and harms families and communities.

Why are people detained?

The Home Office says it detains people in order to remove them from the country – this is why the official name for detention centres is ‘Immigration Removal Centres’. However, in practice the majority of people who are detained are released back into the community, meaning their detention served no purpose.

Who gets detained?

Anyone who does not (yet) have leave to remain in the UK is liable to be detained. This includes people who have claimed asylum, people who do not have valid visas, and people facing deportation after contact with the criminal justice system. Some people in detention have arrived in the UK recently; some have lived in the UK for many years, and may have families and children here.

Where are people detained?

There are currently nine detention centres in the UK (including short term holding facilities). Details of these detention centres are available here. All are run by private security companies. Detention centres look and feel like prisons: people who are detained cannot leave and have limited freedom of movement within the centres. People can also be held under immigration powers in prison.

How long are people detained?

The UK is the only country in Europe with no time limit on immigration detention. This means that people can be detained under immigration powers for weeks, months or even years. People who are detained indefinitely do not have a release date to count down to; their detention is indefinite. The longest we know someone to have been detained for administrative purposes is nine years.

Impact of detention on people and their families 

Detention has a devastating impact on mental health. Indefinite detention means each day is experienced as ‘overlooking a precipice’. People have no idea when they will be released and the lack of control and agency is detrimental to wellbeing long after release. In 2022, 28% of detained people at Brook House had felt suicidal, and 80% had felt depressed. HM Inspectorate of Prisons found there had been 33 recorded incidents of self-harm at the centre in the previous six months. Since 2000, 56 people have died whilst detained under immigration powers.  

Detention damages families and communities. Parents who are detained are separated from their children, and may be held in centres hundreds of miles away making visits impossible. Separation from children increases stress for detained parents and the impact on children is significant. It impacts children’s mental health, their school attainment, feelings of belonging and standard of living. 

How much does detention cost? 

Detention is not only harmful; it is expensive. It costs, on average, more than £41,000 to detain someone for a year. Immigration detention cost £94 million in the year to March 2022. In the five years 2018-2022, the Home Office was proven to have wrongfully detained 1,698 people in immigration detention and paid over £42 million in compensation. 

Many detained people are seeking safety in the UK. People seeking asylum in the UK are prohibited from working. When released from immigration detention, those seeking asylum are forced to survive on minimal asylum allowance of £47.39 per week. Conversely, if people seeking asylum were given the right to work, it is estimated that the UK economy could gain £333 million per year.  

Sometimes people are detained when they are deemed to be working without the correct papers in the UK – however once detained they are allowed to work in the detention centre for £1 per hour. Channel 4 estimated that this generates a profit of around £3 million for the private companies running detention centres in 2014. In 2022, people in detention carried out 215,000 hours of paid work, generating a minimum of £1,395,350 profit for companies which would otherwise have had to employ staff living in the community on minimum wage. 

What are politicians and people of influence saying about detention? 

In 2015, a cross-party parliamentary report on indefinite detention concluded categorically that it was time for a time limit. In 2017, both the British Medical Association and the Bar Council issued reports calling for an end to indefinite detention. In 2019 the Home Affairs Select Committee published a report calling for a 28 day time limit. They found that detention is used too often, people are detained for the wrong reasons and vulnerable people, such as victims of torture, are being detained when they should not be. Many organisations and individuals have raised objections to the way we practice immigration detention in this country, including senior faith leaders, Amnesty International in 2017, Liberty in 2018, the UN in 2022 and the British Medical Association in 2023. 

On 19th September 2023, the first Public Inquiry into immigration detention released its report. The Brook House Inquiry highlights that a culture of change must prevail and that ‘those detained at IRCs, including Brook House, should only be kept there for a maximum of 28 days’. It says it is 'clear from the evidence of detained people, those who worked at Brook House, NGOs, and inspection and monitoring bodies that indefinite detention caused uncertainty, frustration and anxiety for detained people, with a negative impact on their health and wellbeing’ and ‘contributed to conditions where mistreatment could occur more easily.’

The Inquiry Report describes the prisonisation of detention, an ‘us and them’ toxic culture among staff with a lack of understanding of the power dynamic, a culture of impunity, inappropriate use of force on vulnerable detained people, attitudes of racism and toxic bravado and use of violence and violent language. In relation to safeguarding the report describes ‘a wholesale breakdown in the system of safeguards designed to protect vulnerable detained people.’ The Inquiry could not have made the case for an end to indefinite detention more strongly.  

What about human rights? 

Indefinite detention is both a breach of human rights and of the rule of law. ‘No one,’ as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, ‘shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.’  Between June 2022 and June 2023, 75% of people were released from detention on bail. This shows detention is not fulfilling its purported purpose as a last resort before removal from the UK. 

There are many alternatives to detention, which are both more humane and less costly than our current system. Rather than the current hostile environment in the UK, it is possible to create an environment of welcome, which celebrates migration and all the benefits it brings to our society.