On Saturday protesters descended on a business park in Bedfordshire and chanted ‘shut it down!’. The business park, which houses indoor skydiving facilities, is also home to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre.
The demonstration was organised by activists Movement for Justice by Any Means Necessary and is the fifth they have staged at Yarl’s Wood in recent years.
Yarl’s Wood has a capacity of 410 residents. The term ‘residents’ is somewhat misleading as those housed inside the Serco-run facility are being detained against their will. Most of those being held by the government are women, they are often in the process of fighting deportation. Many of them have done nothing wrong, it’s estimated that around half have claimed asylum and are awaiting decisions or appeals.
As The Debrief reported after visiting Yarl’s Wood last year the facility is supposed to be a removal centre, housing detainees due to be deported, but it turns out that three-quarters are eventually released according to a report conducted last year by the outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick. Britain is the only EU member state with no limit on the time that asylum seekers can be detained – they can, in effect, be held indefinitely and legally without a decision being made on their case.
The Debrief spoke to two people who attended the protest. We asked why they were attending. It was the first time either of them had visited Yarl’s Wood:
Nick, 27, said ‘in May's Britain places like Yarl’s Wood are going to increasingly proliferate, and the danger is that this will fly under the radar of the majority of people in the UK. This protest is one action among many that can help to keep the focus on how the most vulnerable people in our society have been suffering the most, and suffering for far too long.’
Lucy, 27, told The Debrief, ‘as a first-time attendee of a Yarl’s Wood protest I found it emotionally toiling. It was a visceral experience seeing, waving at and hearing from the detainees. Unlike other protests, it didn’t feel like we were shouting into an echo chamber or rallying outside an empty Downing Street, this felt like it had a real impact on the people we were trying to support. The crowd was of a varied age and demographic, it was pleasant to see a range of people, ethnicities, sexes and ages coming together.
The crowd attempted to make contact with the people inside Yarl’s Wood to show their support any which way they could, whether it was making noise, flying banners above the fences, waving or playing music. There were intermittent speeches and attempts to start a conversation with the people inside.’
A report from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migrationfound that indefinite detention causes those being detained mental trauma. In particular, the centre has faced heavy criticism for not meeting the needs of vulnerable women.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.