Introduction
Anyone present in the UK who does not have a regular immigration status can - theoretically at least - be subject to immigration detention, sometimes referred to as ‘administrative detention’ because of the lack of automatic judicial oversight (the decision to detain is made as part of an administrative process by a Home Office official, not by a judge before a court.)
The first formal immigration detention centre in the UK was Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) which opened in 1970 with 44 spaces. This was a result of restrictions imposed on Commonwealth citizens by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 which led to a new need to process people impacted upon entry to the UK. Detention capacity has grown significantly since then. In 1994 there were 250 detention bed spaces; numbers peaked in 2015 at around 3500 people detained at one time; dropped significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic and are now on the rise again.
This expansion of the use of detention forms part of an immigration control narrative that emphasises security, deterrence and control. The UK now has one of the largest networks of immigration detention facilities in Europe and is the only country in Europe without a time limit on the length of time someone can be detained.
Arguments for the use of detention, for example that it is an essential means of facilitating the removal of those deemed to have no right to stay in the UK, or to efficiently process asylum applications, have proved specious. The rate of removal from the UK on release from detention has consistently been at around 20%. To some extent this is besides the point - immigration detention is predicated on a logic of exclusion and hierarchies of belonging created more broadly by the UK's immigration system - and the extensive evidence of the harm which is caused by detention should be reason enough to consider alternatives. Nevertheless, it's ineffectiveness in addition to the recent success of "Alternative to Detention" pilots [1], call into question how we have reached this point where immigration detention, and the harm caused by it, are a regular feature of the UK immigration system.
This chapter provides an overview of who can be detained and why, as well as how this works in practice.
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