Tag Archives: Asylum Seekers

Home Office undermines investigations into deaths in detention

Amid the renewed onslaught against asylum seekers and immigrants, new claims have emerged that suggest many potential key witnesses to deaths in detention have been deliberately deported, preventing them from giving evidence in inquests. Furthermore, the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has ignored the concerns from a coroner, voiced last year, that the actions of the Home Office could have impaired investigations.

Sharp increase in modern slavery during the pandemic

Amid the pandemic, reports of sexual and criminal exploitation have severely increased, as stated in new figures calculating the extent of modern slavery and trafficking in the UK. Compared with the preceding year, cases of sexual exploitation, which includes people held captive in brothels and those strong-armed into prostitution, increased by a quarter in 2020. Almost a quarter of cases concerned children.

Communist Party issues call for non-racist immigration and nationality laws

The Communist Party has issued a statement calling for new immigration laws to end decades of racist legislation and the Tories’ ‘hostile environment’, and, setting out the Party’s principles on immigration.

Home Office scheme to deport non-UK rough sleepers relaunched

A contentious program that employs councils and homelessness charities to glean personal data has been quietly reinstituted by the Home Office, potentially causing the deportation of non-UK rough sleepers. Since the relaunch six months ago, two charities and six councils have enrolled in the scheme, as reported by Liberty Investigates, a journalism group of the human rights organisation Liberty.

Priti Patel abandons refugee women

It has been revealed that the Home Office is secretly planning another network of immigration detention units for women, despite their pledge to reform the system and decrease the amount of vulnerable people detained. This autumn, the first detention centre in this plan will open where a former youth prison stood in County Durham. In addition to this facility and others alike, the Home Office has informed asylum groups that they were considering smaller units for women around the UK. There’s no guarantee that children will be spared from detainment in these facilities.

Calls for action following deaths of Mercy Beguma in Glasgow and Abdullah Alhabib in Manchester

Mercy Baguma, a Govan mother originally from Uganda, was found dead in her flat last Saturday (22 August 2020) beside her starving baby causing public outcry across Britain.