Choose Freedom: Keep Haslar & Campsfield Closed!
We are opposed to the plans to reopen Campsfield House and Haslar Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs). The closure of these centres in 2019 and 2015 respectively was a victory for human rights. Find out how you can support efforts to keep these centres closed below.
On 21st August 2024, the Home Secretary announced the government's intention to continue with the plans made under the previous government to reopen Campsfield House and Haslar detention centres.
In a public letter addressed to the Home Secretary, we expressed our opposition to these plans. The statement -co-ordinated by AVID, Keep Campsfield Closed and Border Criminologies - received 82 signatures, representing 50 organisations. You can find the full letter with the signatories here.
As we explain in the Guardian, If the government continues down this path, it will be a policy failure and a moral catastrophe. This letter was sent to the Home Secretary on 2nd September 2024.
Our asks to the Home Secretary
- Reduce the Immigration Detention estate: No human should be incarcerated for administrative convenience. End the use of detention as a tool of immigration enforcement starting by using detention as a last resort and ending the detention of vulnerable people, in line with Objective 13 of the Global Compact for Migration.
- Review and Implement the Brook House Inquiry Recommendations: Ensure that the systemic failures identified in the inquiry are addressed and that similar abuses do not occur in other IRCs.
- Uphold the Values of Fairness and Humanity: Align immigration policies with principles of fairness, humanity, openness, diversity and inclusion, as recommended by the Windrush review.
- Invest in community-based alternatives: Redirect resources away from detention and into community-based support that prioritise dignity, fair treatment, and human rights.
- Engage with Individuals with Lived Experience of Detention: Any future policy decisions must be led by those with lived experience of detention and migration, ensuring that their voices are at the forefront of creating a truly just system
What Can You Do to Stop Detention Expansion?
Thousands of people are failed by the UK’s punitive immigration system every year: stuck in limbo; forced to make dangerous journeys to the UK; unable to access legal advice or pay expensive visa fees; threatened with removal to a country where they have no ties or are not safe.
Instead of providing safety, support and dignity, they are detained. Stripped of their freedom without a release date and without trial.
Detaining more people is not the answer. Say no to detention expansion. Choose Freedom. Here is how:
- Send a Freedom Bird to your local MP, share on social media or in your window. Initiated by people who have lived the realities of immigration detention in the UK, Freedom Birds are a call for change. They illustrate the hurt that is caused by detention, bravely sharing personal stories with the hope that this will prevent more people from being detained. These birds were originally created by members of Beyond Detention's Art Group.
- Instructions on how to make your own Freedom Bird.
- Download and print original Freedom Birds artwork.
- Join Keep Campsfield Closed Coalition, a campaign group local to Oxford. Whether you are based in Oxford or not, Keep Campsfield Closed Coaltion have created this guide on how you can support them.
- Join No Detention No Haslar, a campaign group local to Gosport and Portsmouth.
- Sign this petition from someone who was detained in Campsfield House.
- Follow Right To Remain These Walls Must Fall for public events and actions to end detention.
