Dawn raids and detention- dangerous or deserved?

Under the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, refused asylum seekers can be forcibly removed and detained through unannounced dawn raids. Discover what happens...

"A stranger comes into your room and tells you to pack your things"

Agnesa Murselaj

Agnesa Murselaj was fifteen when her family were dawn raided in 2005.

Listen to her "terrifying" experience:

Glasgow Girls campaigning

While Agnesa and her family were detained for three weeks in Yarl's Wood detention centre, a group of her school friends campaigned for her release.

They are known as the 'Glasgow Girls' and continue to campaign against dawn raids and the detainment of children.

Glasgow Girls talk to the media

"The Home Office made a mistake..."

"They phoned and said that the United Nations said it was not safe enough for us to go back. They shouldn't have taken us in the first place.

"I don't think they should take children into detention centres. They look just like jails," Agnesa said.

The Home Office refuse to comment on individual cases but it has declared detention to "play an important role in maintaining an effective immigration control, including helping to ensure the removal of those without any right to remain here and who refuse to leave the UK voluntarily."

On the issue of forced removals, the Home Office also states "Staff should not use force unless it is absolutely essential to effect arrest and, in the case of families, should be mindful of the effect on children."

An ex-employee of the Home Office's Immigration services, who wishes to remain anonymous, insists that dawn raids need to occur on the weekend because people are usually at home then.

"We have tried to give notice first but they fail to turn up at the airport and when we turn up at the given address, there isn’t anybody at home," he said.

The claim that dawn raids are performed on a weekend to ensure solicitors are not contactable is also contested: "Solicitors can be called on the telephone available at all of the detention centres," he argued.

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Are detention centres just like jails?

The ex-Immigration official also refutes the idea that 'detention centres are like jails' and maintains that women and children are not kept in the same place as foreign criminals.

Generally, families, he says, should only be in detention for up to one week.

He believes delays are not usually the Home Office's fault: "Where this has taken longer is when a solicitor or someone has jumped in with a reason why they should stay or the flight has been changed.

"Sometimes the asylum seekers have made themselves irremovable through their actions. For instance, they might strip down, take off all their clothes and refuse to move.

"Or they make their child go into hysterics or feign a sudden illness so that when it comes to removal, you cannot remove them," he said.

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Listen to Lia Deyal, a volunteer from Bail for Detainees (BID), discuss why she thinks detention is wrong:

Click here!! to listen to another account of a dawn raid from a Nigerian asylum seeker...

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