A Sheffield-based action group is organising an event for people to come together and protest against Hassockfield Immigration Removal Centre.
Hassockfield is a women’s detention centre which also operates under the name Derwentside IRC.
South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) organised a similar event protesting against Derwentside IRC last year.
At the event, the speaker said: “On the last unannounced visit, the report concluded that those at risk of self harm or suicide were not given sufficient care. Record keeping was deficient across most areas, and vulnerable detainees continued to be detained, despite evidence of a deleterious effect on their health and wellbeing.”
Support groups from across the nation came together to blow whistles, shout, and bang pots and pans to let the women inside know that people were here campaigning for them.
Group member and secretary Stuart Crosthwaite said: “The threat of detention and deportation hangs over every person who seeks asylum whose claim hasn’t been recognised.
“It’s important for people to know that every time people who seek asylum are asked to report to the home office, which is usually every two weeks, there’s a real danger that they won’t come out of it and will be sent to detention in an immigration detention van. These people have lives and families, as you can imagine, that worries people greatly.”
A spokesperson for the End Detention group said are a group of 21 women, all of whom have experienced immigration detention, or are at risk of being detained.
They said: “Some of our members have been locked up in Derwentside detention centre, and other members were previously detained at Yarl’s Wood. Some members of our group have been locked up in both of these detention centres.
We want to end detention, for everyone. Detention is dehumanising; it crushes our hearts and our dignity. It destroys people’s mental health, and for some people causes suicide. Detention is a nightmare. It inflicts so much pain.
Detention is also a huge waste of public funds, at a time when the Government is telling us there isn’t enough money for essential public services such as healthcare, education and transport. The Government says there isn’t enough money to pay nurses and doctors, teachers, and bus and train drivers properly. But at the same time as they are telling us this, they are wasting hundreds of millions pounds every year on locking people up in detention.
A lot of the money that is spent on detention goes to the private companies Mitie and Serco, which run the UK’s detention centres on behalf of the Government. These companies are using our pain to line their pockets and make huge profits. They are using our misery as a money-making machine.
We will continue to campaign against the cruel detention of people seeking safety so no-one else goes through what we have experienced.
Together we have people power. Together we can end immigration detention!”
If you are affected by a claim of asylum that hasn’t been responded to, Assist Sheffield is a South Yorkshire based organisation which helps people ‘seeking sanctuary and who have been refused asylum’.