BID Statement in Response to the Home Secretary’s Inhumane Asylum Announcements

Yesterday’s announcements are a historic low in the UK Government’s treatment of people seeking safety. 

Instead of standing against racism and hate, the Government has chosen to respond by doubling down on division, driving immigration policy ever further into a spiral of cruelty. 

These proposals attack the rights, dignity, and safety of people who have already survived unimaginable hardship. From further stripping away basic human rights protections to removing the Government duties to prevent destitution, these proposals would make an already harsh asylum system even more cruel and punitive.  

We are deeply concerned about provisions that will make refugee status temporary and put more people, including families and children, at risk of detention. We affirm that safety is not safety unless it is secure and permanent and that we all have the right to live freely and safely with our families and in our communities. 

The immigration system is already cruel and precedent shows that policies such as this fail to achieve their stated aims and cause immense harm. These announcements come at a time of record low levels of legal representation in immigration detention. We have already begun receiving calls to our Advice Line from individuals worried about how these changes could affect them.  

To everyone concerned we want to emphasise that nothing has changed immediately because of these proposals, we stand with you and are committed to challenging changes that impact the rights of people in detention as they arise.  

BID has spent more than twenty years challenging the Government’s harmful detention and deportation practices. We are already addressing many of the issues signalled in the announcement, including detention of families, accelerated removals, limited legal access, and shrinking human rights protections and we will continue with this vital work.

We remain fully committed to ensuring that people in immigration detention can access the rights that they are entitled to.  

We have already witnessed an outpouring of solidarity and resistance, and it is a source of inspiration and hope to be part of a community of volunteers, supporters, lawyers and organisations who share our vision of a world where people are not deprived of their liberty for immigration purposes or deported from their home.  

To find out how you can get involved or support our work read more here.

“We join many others in expressing our extreme dismay at the prospect of such a cruel and unworkable proposal. This is the result of an ever-lowering bar in public discourse and policy, normalising harm and injustice. These measures would leave people, who have already survived so much, more vulnerable, more at risk of detention, and with fewer rights than ever before. As always BID will be here for people in detention, and we will closely monitor and challenge attempts to further attack their rights.” 

- Charlotte Buckley, Director, Bail for Immigration Detainees