STAND UP
FOR MIGRANTS’ RIGHTS
The Government’s current Immigration Bill is a missed opportunity to create a fairer, more humane immigration system. Instead it will bring millions more people into the clutches of the hostile environment and could lead to them being imprisoned without release dates.
Tell your MP to vote for a strict 28-day time limit for everyone in immigration detention and to end the hostile environment.
The UK is the only European country without a time limit on detention. Up to 28,000 people are locked up in immigration detention centres by the Home Office every year – without release dates.
Many people are held for months on end, some for years. This is despite medical evidence that just one month in detention devastates mental health. Their detention isn’t even authorised by a judge.
And the Government’s hostile environment has turned trusted public servants like doctors, teachers and police officers into border guards tasked with sharing people’s private data for immigration enforcement.
No one should be afraid of seeking medical attention or reporting a crime because they fear their own detention. And the Windrush scandal made devastatingly clear that the effects of the hostile environment are not limited to undocumented migrants. Black and minority ethnic citizens, and anyone who seems visibly ‘foreign’, are cast under a cloud of suspicion as they attempt to go about their daily lives.
TAKE ACTION - EMAIL YOUR MP
- Tell your MP to back New Clause 2 – New Clause 4 to secure a strict 28-day time limit to end the unnecessary suffering of indefinite immigration detention.
- Tell your MP to back Amendment 6 to end the xenophobic hostile environment.
- Remind your MP that this is a once in a generation chance to create a fairer, more humane immigration system – they must seize it.
