Breaking a Person’s Spirit at Detention Centres

On September 20^th, I flew into London Heathrow Airport with the intention of catching a connecting flight to Edinburgh. My travel plans were to visit my heritage for a few days in Scotland, meet up with some professional contacts I had made during my PhD studies and visit a friend in London. This did not happen as I was refused leave to enter the United Kingdom. Instead the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA) intended to immediately deport me back to New York, the port that I flew from but not the start of my travels. I stayed with the intentions to either convince the UKBA officials that my intentions were true and that I was only coming to the United Kingdom to visit; or if refused entrance to the United Kingdom to continue on to another European or African port, or if both these requests were not possible than at least to deport me to my home city, Seattle, and not New York. After 22 days, several interviews with immigration officials and a public defender, and 93 documents passed on to me the UKBA deported me to Seattle, Washington, USA.

The photo is of a detainee’s asylum case at Harmondsworth. At the time of the photo the immigration office had already given him over 500 pages.

On September 21^st, the UKBA had me detained at Harmondsworth, a detention centre no more than a fifteen minute drive from London Heathrow’s Airport. I remained here until October 12^th. Driving into this centre is much like a prison, where the van shipping those detained drives into an inspection garage, and then through gates that are over 20 feet tall with 3 feet of razor wire dangling on both sides. The detainees are then walked by the guards upstairs where it takes hours to check each detainee in, partially because the detention centre is understaffed but also because the guards at the detention centre are not motivated to work diligently. Each detainee goes through a quick round of medical history questions, every detainee’s item is itemised and locked up, each detainee is patted down, and a general set of questions regarding a detainee’s dietary restrictions, faith, marital status are asked and recorded. It is at this time that a detainee is assigned to Fir House of the detention centre, a temporary holding area. Each detainee is given a mobile phone and SIM card. Each detainee also earns 71 Pence for each full day spent at the detention centre, which is very much needed as there is not enough credit on the mobile phone SIM card to even send a small message text to the London area.

The 3^rd Floor of Fir House, Harmondsworth Detention Centre.

When walking into Fir House wing of Harmondsworth, it continues to look like a prison with several perks. These perks, however, slowly melt away the longer a detainee spends here. The rooms are intimidating; they very much resemble a cell with the exception of a flat screen television and basic cable. Detainees in Fir House are locked into these cells at night from 22:00 to 7:00. There are two to three computers that allow for limited surfing over the internet. Social networks are blocked. In my own experience both of my Blog sites were blocked most of my detainment, starting on the 24^th of September when I submitted a Blog to the neocon-nightmare site until my departure on October 12th.

View from the foosball table on the 3^rd Floor of Fir House, Harmondsworth.

There are foosball, billiards, ping pong tables, and board games but use of these are restricted from 9:30-12:30, 14:00-17:30 and 19:00-21:30. Football and cricket can be played between the hours of 14:00-17:30 and 19:00-21:00 if there are guards available to oversee the use of equipment and detainees. All of these activities are at the discretion of the guards and can be withdrawn at anytime.

Harmondsworth can house up to 1000 detainees at once, with an average occupancy rate of 95%. It is one of the largest immigration detainment centres in Europe. Since there is a large volume of people here, the food is prepared in bulk and is often average to poor in quality, the only advantage being many of the dishes are prepared by South and Central Asian men who do a fair job in preparing curry and rice dishes. Such cooking, however, is alien and not desired by immigrants coming from the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia. Efforts at other cuisines are overcooked and not popular with the detainees. The portions detainees receive are only one plate per meal and the size of the portions given is dependent on the detainees working in the kitchen (some receive more or less than others). Most detainees abstain from breakfast as the offerings amount to only porridge or corn flakes.

Detainees queuing for food at the cafeteria in Dove House, Harmondsworth.

There is no argument comparing the Harmondsworth Detention Centre to that of Her Majesty’s Prison System. There are more perks and freedoms in Harmondsworth compared to prison. But when being housed at Harmondsworth a detainee learns quickly how superficial these perks are. They are limited not only by a strict set of hours but also by the guards and the detainees that work in the detainment system. They can be cut off at the discretion of one person. Politics certainly comes into play here. Unlike prison a detainee does not know how long he/she will be housed at a detention centre or if they will be released or deported. The longer they remain in a detention centre, however, the sooner they learn that the United Kingdom does not uphold and champion human rights. Instead, the immigration service turns a blind eye to those throughout the lower ranks of the detainment system to abuse their positions of authority in order to break the spirit of every detainee. By the time the immigration service has made a decision regarding releasing or deporting a detainee, that detainee is ready to concede to any decision in order to leave what is a hopeless and meaningless purgatory.

A New Study Area thanks to the overzealousness and incompetence of the United Kingdom Border Agency

Since I study North and West Africa I have little interest in Europe with the exception that African aid organisations are commonly based in European cities like London, Paris, Berlin, Geneva, and Rome. On the night of September 19^th I left the United States for the United Kingdom in order to visit some of the friends I have made through publishing articles, to see what job opportunities might exist for me in Africa through a professional contact, and to see my Scottish heritage (this one was not so important as the others but still part of my travel plans). I had plans to only be there for three weeks and then to continue to Continental Europe to meet up with other friends and professional contacts and then eventually return to Africa to either start a new job or continue with my research. When I arrived in London Heathrow Airport on the morning of September 20^th I did not know that the authorities would see such intentions as threatening to the maintenance and preservation of their borders, and what ensued from September 20^th to October 12^th was a confrontation between me, the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA), and the companies contracted out by the UKBA to detain individuals refused entry into, or being deported from the United Kingdom.

In addition to my naivety regarding revealing all my plans to the UKBA, there were other factors weighing in on the UKBA’s to refuse me entry. One was that I had no return ticket or on going ticket from the United Kingdom to another country. I have entered the United Kingdom before without one in 2004 and 2009, but then my intentions were to only visit and meet up with a committee member for my PhD studies (these two visits were technically work related, too, but the UKBA in Dover was flexible on both those times and permitted me in). At Heathrow Airport they searched my bags and saw that I had resumes and curriculum vitae in my possession. In the interview upon deciding whether to grant me entry or not on the 20^th of September, I also revealed that I did not intend on returning to the United States for a few years, as my work and life is on the continent of Africa. The price for my transparency was more suspicion and overzealousness on part of the UKBA. They deeply suspected that I would try to seek out work and illegally stay in the United Kingdom. They were only willing to deport me back to the United States and specifically to New York, the port I had come from. It did not matter to the UKBA that I was not from New York, that my family is on the West Coast, and that I had future plans of travelling onto Continental Europe and Africa.

The UKBA has the right to deny anyone entry to the United Kingdom but I was not about to have them ruin my other travel plans and further impoverish me by sending me to a city over 3000 miles away from where my friends and family are. I refused to be sent back to New York and they then handed me over to the contracted companies, ‘Reliance’ (who manage the detainment of people at Heathrow Airport and transportation of detainees to detention centres) and ‘GEO’ (An US Security Company that runs eight detention centres in the United Kingdom). I was at the airport until the morning of the 21^st and then transported over to the Harmondsworth Detention Centre. I remained here doing my best to convince the authorities to either allow me to enter the United Kingdom as a visitor in order to meet up with people, leave the United Kingdom for either the ports of Amsterdam or Casablanca, or if I was to be deported home then to Seattle and not New York. It would take two weeks to convince them to deport me back to Seattle and even when that was settled they gave me difficulty and tried to send me back to New York instead. They booked a flight back to the United States first landing in Chicago but then continuing on to Seattle-Tacoma airport for the 6^th of October.

The injustice of this whole experience did not end on October the 6^th. That morning I was awoken by the guards at 2:30 and checked out of the Harmondsworth Detention Centre. I was returned to Terminal 5 of London’s Heathrow Airport and was at the detainee waiting room by 4:30. My flight was at 7:55. At this point the authorities came to me and asked me if I had my passport. I reminded them that I had not seen my passport since September 20^th when the UKBA decided to refuse me entry and threatened to return me to New York. The authorities came back at 7:00 to tell me they could still not find my passport. It was likely I was going to miss my flight but they would try to rebook a flight. Twelve hours would pass before I grew agitated and demanded to see my consulate or someone from the immigration office. It was at this point that I was told they found my passport but that the immigration office would have to reschedule my flight. I thought that meant I would be waiting at Terminal 5 until they did. No. Instead I had to go through the process of checking into the Harmondsworth Detention Centre all over again, because of an immigration officer’s incompetence. I was back in the detention centre by 5:30 on October the 7^th. I suffered from sleep deprivation, and I remained another six days at Harmondsworth because of their negligence.

I encountered quite a number of people during this time in detention, from September 20^th to October 12^th. Many of those in a position of power suspected that I would resent and hate them considering the events that unfolded. I want to make it plain and clear right now that many of the guards, my solicitor (what we would call a lawyer in the United States), the authorities who interviewed me were all professional and courteous. So this Blog entry and future ones are not aimed at anyone who had personal involvement with my situation (except perhaps the incompetent immigration officer who failed to deliver my passport to the proper authorities on October 6^th). However, there is a price for detaining me, an academic, in a system that is very corrupt and counterproductive. The UKBA ruined my plans and deported me back to my country but my problem is minute and certainly not rare considering the many Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, and Eastern Europeans also detained by the UKBA. And since the UKBA allowed me time to meet some of these men, eat with them, talk with them, play ping pong and help them at times with their legal paperwork, I was compelled to document my observations at Harmondsworth and interview detainees that were willing to share their stories. I collected much of the paperwork circulating the detention centre, I took photos, I recorded conversations at legal visits and at the detention areas, I wrote down my personal observations and I conducted 30 confidential interviews from September 20^th to October 12^th. It was not my intention to stay in one place for 22 days and actually do research in the United Kingdom. But this crisis allowed me to see the injustices that many people experience and the inefficiency of coordinating immigration affairs between the UKBA and the private companies of Reliance and GEO. I will be posting information concerning the UKBA and United Kingdom’s immigration policies in the next few weeks to this Blog.