People held in London’s removal centres are subject to constant reminders of the intentions of the Home Office to remove them from the UK. Brook House, Tinsley House, Colnbrook and Harmondsworth IRCs have been built adjacent to the runways of Gatwick and Heathrow airports. Visitors to people detained in these centres cannot avoid the sight and sounds of planes taking off at close quarters.
At the point of being taken to an airport and leaving the UK, people in detention are treated the same way regardless of whether the legal basis of their departure from the UK is deportation or removal. In this section we use the word ‘deportation’ to cover both types of cases for convenience and to make clear the violence of this process.
There are a couple of practical requirements which may determine whether a person can be deported from the UK. The first of these is the need to have a valid travel document, the second is being considered fit to fly.
The Home Office may hold the passport of a person that they want to remove from the UK and send back to their country of origin, for example if it was confiscated during a raid before the person was taken into detention. With a valid passport it should be a straightforward matter for that person to be readmitted to their country of origin on arrival. Expired passports can generally be reissued in the UK to enable travel.
If someone in detention does not have a passport (for example they entered the UK with no documents), then the Home Office will take steps to obtain an emergency travel document (ETD) from the relevant foreign mission in the UK, and will expect the person to cooperate with this process, providing sufficient information about themselves to enable the foreign mission to acknowledge them as a national and issue a travel document. This can be a slow process, whether or not the individual cooperates.
Some countries will accept the return of their nationals on a document called a UK Letter [1], produced by the Home Office, and sent with accompanying information about the individual and their ties to the country in question. This is a quicker and more straightforward process than getting an emergency travel document.
Some people simply do not have the information demanded by the Home Office. For example, if they left their country of origin many years ago as a young child. Others decide not to cooperate with the process, perhaps just for a period of time, in an attempt to remain in the UK. Where there are difficulties and delays in re-documentation, the individual will often be characterised by the Home Office as non-cooperative. This has consequences for views on their alleged absconding risk, and can result in release on bail being more difficult and their detention becoming prolonged.
Resource tip on travel documents
If the person wants to take steps to expedite the re-documentation process, visitors can signpost them to the BID factsheet on Travel Documents, which contains practical tools for people detained who wish to cooperate with the redocumentation process, including template letters to embassies and High Commissions, contact details, and lists of actions that can be taken in order to try to prove identity, obtain travel documents, and provide evidence of their cooperation with the documentation process.
Visitors can help people in detention work through this factsheet and write letters to embassies and High Commissions, without being considered to be giving immigration legal advice.
The factsheet is available here.
See also the BID Travel Document Project website at http://www.biduk.org/tdp where people detained and visitors can download the following:
The Home Office list of evidence needed to get a new travel document
Latest list of contact details for embassies and high commissions in the UK, produced by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Contact list for MPs with removal centres in their constituency
The Home Office may issue a Notice of Liability to Removal letter to someone without a travel document being in place, but with the expectation that it will be obtained before issuing removal directions.
Airlines have stand alone ‘fit to fly’ regulations, generally requiring passengers who have requested assistance to board a flight to provide information about their condition and any special handling needs, and only requiring medical clearance if a potential passenger has an acute or unstable medical condition, a communicable disease, or is unable to care for themself.
The Detention Service Order (DSO) The Protection, Use and Sharing of Medical Information Relating to People Detained Under Immigration Powers set out the relevant process [2] sets out the procedures for fitness to fly. The Home Office starts from the assumption that a person fit to be detained is fit to be removed unless there is clinical evidence to the contrary. The person in detention, their representative, a registered healthcare professional, of the IRC healthcare team can raise concerns of their fitness to fly.
Confirmation that a person is ‘fit to fly’ is not required for each and every person the Home Office wishes to deport. The Home Office does however have a positive duty of care for people it has detained who are physically or mentally ill, and should exercise that positive duty in accordance with its legal obligations. Arguably, this duty should - but in practice may not always - include protecting those people in detention who are not fit to fly from any deterioration in their health as a result of enforced removal.
If visitors have any concerns about the effect of a long journey, including a flight on a person’s health, or want to ensure that adequate support is provided during the journey, they can contact Medical Justice whose healthcare team can assess fitness to fly.
People in detention or their legal representatives may also make representations to the Home Office, arguing that they should not be removed because of their current state of health. The Home Office requires people to substantiate representations with a medical report, and may ask to be given access to medical records, in order to consider postponing removal.
If a person in detention is being returned to a country for which they will need malaria prophylaxis, Home Office guidance is that they should not be returned before sufficient time has passed to allow the treatment to take effect.
The inadequacy of healthcare assessments in detention of “fitness to fly” of people in detention was highlighted in evidence in the Brook House Inquiry. Evidence heard that there were limited details and gaps in people’s medical history in fitness to fly letters and - on occasion - fit to fly letters pre-emptively approved the use of force to facilitate removal of someone with a healthcare condition. In response, the Brook House Inquiry Chair recommended that:
Recommendation 20: Updating guidance regarding ‘fit to fly and fit for detention’ letters: The Home Office must review and update Detention Services Order 01/2016: The Protection, Use and Sharing of Medical Information Relating to People Detained Under Immigration Powers, to ensure that guidance given to GPs working in the immigration detention estate in relation to their duties and responsibilities in writing ‘fit to fly and fit for detention’ letters is clear. It must liaise with NHS England and any relevant medical regulators as necessary. The Home Office must ensure that training about the updated guidance takes place on a regular (at least annual) basis for GPs working in the immigration detention estate and those responsible for managing them. The training must be subject to an assessment. The Home Office must monitor compliance with this updated guidance at least annually.
The response from the government at the time was [3]: “Within IRCs, NHS England are responsible for commissioning a healthcare service consummate to that which is available within the community. Although fit to fly letters are a medico legal practice – and outside of the responsibility of NHS England – where a clinician has concerns in relation to an individual’s detention or fitness to fly, they will, in line with safeguarding responsibilities ensure that this is shared, where appropriate, with the Home Office to support decision making.”
Future Watch: Look out for any response to the Brook House Inquiry under the Labour government.
Most enforced removals take place using scheduled flights. Airlines must be told by the Home Office that they are carrying people who are being forcibly removed from the UK. Certain airlines impose a restriction on the number of people being forcibly removed that they will carry on a flight. The Home Office increasingly uses charter flights to avoid objections and interventions by cabin staff, flight crew, and passengers, and as a more efficient way of moving larger numbers of people to countries with high numbers of returns and deportations. For example, a charter flight might leave from the UK for West Africa, stopping in Nigeria and Ghana.
The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) examined a removal flight from the UK to Sri Lanka in 2012.
“In the CPT’s opinion, such operations entail a manifest risk of inhuman and degrading treatment (during preparations for the deportation, during the actual flight or when the deportation is aborted).” [4]
The CPT’s report on this removal flight to Sri Lanka describes how “a tentative list of persons to be deported (some 120 possible candidates) is drawn up by the UKBA some six weeks before the removal date”. Four days prior to the flight only 51 names were still on the flight manifest, and only 28 people finally left the UK on the flight.
The Home Office routinely overbooks removal charter flights to ensure they leave the UK full in the event of last minute injunctions, despite sustained criticism of overbooking by HM Inspectorate of Prisons and the Home Affairs Select Committee. This means that someone in detention may be prepared for removal and taken to the airport, but not taken on board the plane and later returned to detention. This is highly distressing and traumatic.
People who physically resist enforced removal or cause disruption on a plane before take-off may be taken out of the process or off the plane for the Home Office to attempt removal on another occasion. The Home Office describes this as a ‘failed removal’.
Resisting removal will influence risk assessments for the use of restraints during future removal attempts, and are used by the Home Office to oppose applications for release from detention.
The removal escorting process is outsourced by the Home Office to private contractors, who are responsible for ensuring that the person being removed or deported gets on board the plane and, where deemed appropriate, is subject to control and restraint techniques during boarding and the flight itself.
In 2012 information provided by the Home Office to the Home Affairs Select Committee showed that for the period 2008 to end June 2011 over two thirds of people detained and then removed from the UK were escorted to the airport but not on the flight. Under one third were also escorted during the flight because they were unwilling to leave voluntarily, were vulnerable in some way, or were on a Home Office charter flight. In 12% of individual cases where overseas escorts were present on the flight, or about one in every eight people removed this way, restraint or force was used by escorts on the person at some point.
Table: Percentage of individual removals where escorts used on the flight and where restraint used on removal
Number of cases
Total removals from the UK
57,859
-
Taken to airport by escorts but travel alone (unescorted on the flight)
40,799
71%
Escorts travel with the person being removed (escorted on the flight)
17,060
29%
Number of instances where restraint was used on removal
2,009
12% of removals where escort present on the flight
4% of all removals
Source: Home Office for Home Affairs Select Committee
Immigration detention exists as a means of coercive control over people who the UK government wants to remove. It should come as no surprise therefore - upsetting as it is - that the Home Office and its subcontractors are allowed to use force to remove people from the UK. Indeed, this is necessary for it to perform its function. There are however limitations on the use of force and it has come under substantial criticism over the years.
“Any use of force must be necessary, reasonable and proportionate, and only using approved techniques” [5].
The Home Office Detention Service Order (DSO) on Use of Restraint for Escorted Moves also sets out the procedures for the use of handcuffs, leg restraints, and the waist restraint belt on people detained under escort. Equipment used must be approved by the Home Office, and should only be deployed using approved techniques.
Outside of this DSO, the approved methods used for control and restraint are not a matter of public record, and there are longstanding concerns about the accountability and conduct of private security companies who carry out escorting work on behalf of the Home Office. Just some of these concerns are:
The normalisation of the use of force within the context of immigration removal.
Inadequate management of the use of force, including accounting for the use of force by means of recording the reasons for the use of force in individual cases.
Numerous allegations of ill treatment during the enforced removal process, but inadequate systems for monitoring, investigating, and complaining about the use of force and restraints during removals, and abusive behaviour by overseas escort staff.
These same mechanical restraints and techniques may also be used by escorting staff when people in detention are being taken to court hearings or external medical appointments, or during in-country journeys between detention facilities. Shockingly, the Home Office is allowed to use force to escort and remove children and pregnant women, in exceptional circumstances.
Medical Justice research into damage sustained at the hands of Home Office escorts during removal found that:
“The most common form of injury recorded resulted from inappropriate use of handcuffing, including swelling and cuts to the wrist, sometimes leading to long lasting nerve damage. Other injuries included bruising and swelling to the face and fractures to the wrists, ribs or ankles. Often psychological consequences resulted, such as the onset or exacerbation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), panic attacks, suicidal feelings and depression.” [6]
The use of restraint techniques during a removal flight led to the unlawful killing on 12 October 2010 of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan father of four who had been living in the UK for many years. His death prompted the Home Affairs Committee to inquire into the rules governing enforced removals from the UK, and the role of the Home Office in overseeing its escort contractors.
This led to changes in the Use of Force Training Manual in 2015 and the removal of the technique whereby detained people are handcuffed with their hands secured behind their back whilst seated creating a risk of positional asphyxia (whereby a person’s ability to breathe is impeded because of the way they are being restrained).
However, the Brook House Inquiry heard evidence of continued use of this practice alongside evidence of unauthorised and highly dangerous techniques being used on several occasions during the relevant period in Brook House IRC. More broadly, the Brook House Inquiry report set out serious concerns with the use of force stating that:
The process of monitoring and reviewing the use of force was completely ineffectual
Routine and quick use of force in response to incidents of self-harm
The use of force against people who were mentally unwell
An unusually high number of instances
A lack of management supervision during use of force
This led to a number of recommendations from the Brook House Inquiry Chair for the Home Office to review Use of Force procedures, as a matter of urgency. In response a new Detention Service Order for the Use of Force is in progress from the Home Office - it is yet to be seen if there will be further developments under the Labour government.
Amnesty International, (2011), Out of Control—the case for a complete overhaul of enforced removals by private contractors.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/sites/default/files/out_of_control_1.pdf
Medical Justice, (2008), Outsourcing abuse: The use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum seekers. Available at http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/medical-justice-challenges-the-detention-of-victims-of-torture-in-the-high-court/
Fran Weber, (2010), The politics of voluntary returns. Institute of Race Relations. http://www.irr.org.uk/news/the-politics-of-voluntary-returns/
Migration Observatory (2024), Briefing Deportation, Removal and Voluntary Departure from the UK https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/MigObs-Briefing-Deportation-and-Voluntary-Departure-from-the-UK-2024.pdf
Detention Services Order 07/2016 Use of restraint(s) for escorted moves – all staff https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/543806/DSO_07-2016_Use_of_Restraints.pdf
Home Office, Use of Force Guidance for Immigration Enforcement Officers.
Available at:https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6271085d8fa8f57a42f5fc18/Use_of_force.pdf
The Brook House Inquiry Recommendations on the Use of Force: https://brookhouseinquiry.org.uk/main-page/volume-2-level-1/part-e-recommendations-to-prevent-recurrence-of-mistreatment/use-of-force/
Council of Europe, (2013), Report to the Government of the United Kingdom on the visit to the United Kingdom carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 22 to 24 October 2012. Available at http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/gbr/2013-14-inf-eng.htm#_Toc343007385
Medical Justice, (2008), Outsourcing abuse: The use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum seekers. Available at http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/medical-justice-challenges-the-detention-of-victims-of-torture-in-the-high-court/
Further Reading about Deportation and Enforced Removals