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Summary: The disclosure shows that the detention of children by the immigration authorities is continuing on a large scale despite a coalition confirmation last December that the practice was to end.
[6 July 2011] - A five-year-old French boy detained at Heathrow airport in March this year was told by a G4S custody officer wearing latex gloves: "You're a big boy now so I have to search you."
The prison inspectors who witnessed the incident at the UK border agency (UKBA) holding facility at Terminal 4 at Heathrow airport said before the "rub-down search" the boy had not been detained with the necessary authority but signed in as a visitor instead – possibly unlawfully. The inspectors say that his detention would have gone unrecorded but for their surprise visit.
The boy and his Syrian father had been detained as they returned to their home in Britain after a family visit to Syria.
The boy was among 174 children, including 16 unaccompanied minors, who were detained at the short-term holding centres at Terminals 3 and 4 at Heathrow over the three months between December and February this year. The inspector's report, published today, says the children were held for between eight and nine hours on average but 24 were held for over 18 hours.
The disclosure shows that the detention of children by the immigration authorities is continuing on a large scale despite a coalition confirmation last December that the practice was to end. Critics say that a loophole which allows the short-term detention of "border cases" was not highlighted at the time.
This gives UKBA the right, subject to ministerial approval, to hold families at the border on their arrival while their immigration status is established or pending their immediate return: "This will be short detention, for a few dozen families each year, usually for less than 24 hours and only where logistics or safety makes pre-departure accommodation unworkable," says the Home Office policy document.
The latest figures show that eight children were detained in May in immigration centres including six children under the age of five. These figures exclude the short-term holding facilities at Heathrow.
The reports by the chief inspector of prisons into the Heathrow facilities say that the boy and his father were held in Terminal 4 holding room with only authority to detain the father. The inspectors saw a UKBA immigration officer tell a G4S custody detention officer to book the child in as a visitor with the agreement of her line manager: "This meant the child's detention would not have been recorded on UKBA or G4S records and would have under-recorded the number of children being held and the average length of detention. … Moreover holding a child without an IS91 [the necessary authority] could have been unlawful."
The inspectors also say that they saw the father when he had not been formally interviewed and was very distressed at the prospect of being refused entry and separated from his son: "When we spoke with him he did not understand what was going to happen to him next. He broke down in tears in front of his child and the other detainees, which was distressing for him and distressing for the child."
Clare Sambrook of the End Detention Now campaign writing on openDemocracy said the reports raised uncomfortable questions: "How many children are detained 'without the necessary authority', misleadingly listed as 'visitors', patted down and patronised by people who may or may not be CRB-checked?
"And, if this is how immigration detention works when HM Inspectorate of Prisons is in the house, how do things go when nobody important is watching?"
Further Information:
- UNITED KINGDOM: Immigrant children still detained, despite govt pledge to end it (24 May 2011)
- UNITED KINGDOM: Landmark human rights ruling allows asylum mother to remain in UK (2 February 2011)
- UNITED KINGDOM: Yarl's Wood child detention ruled unlawful (11 January 2011)
- UNITED KINGDOM: 'State Sponsored Cruelty' - Children in Immigration Detention (Medical Justice Network, September 2010)
- Safe at Last? Children on the front line of UK Border Control (Refugee and Migrant Justice, March 2010)
- More on children's rights in the United Kingdom
pdf: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/06/detention-children-border-agenc...