We publish our report today analysing the devastating experiences of those rounded up en masse, held in immigration detention and threatened with forced removal to Rwanda in 2024. We do so marking the anniversary of the publication of the report of the Brook House Inquiry, the public inquiry revealing conditions that led to disturbing levels of inhuman and degrading treatment in detention. Detained people are still being subjected to the failures underlying these conditions today, across all UK detention centres. 

Our report comes a few weeks after the new Labour government announced plans for a “large surge in enforcement and return flights” and to expand immigration detention by opening Campsfield and Haslar Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) and days after Keir Starmer said he was “interested” in learning about Italy’s offshoring scheme in Albania.  

Detention conditions have recently been described by inspectors to be the worst they have seen, and safeguards meant to protect vulnerable people in detention have been weakened. This report shines a light on the brutal reality of immigration detention to facilitate removal and the harm that is set to be repeated by a large surge in flights and expansion of detention. 

Ahead of forced removal charter flights, people are rounded up en masse and locked up in large numbers in detention. This often includes many vulnerable people with histories of torture, trafficking and trauma, who are fearful of the country they are being forcibly sent to. Holding them in detention, an environment that is inherently harmful, causes distress and avoidable suffering. The threatened forced removals to Rwanda in 2024, the subject of this report, is the latest example of this.   

Analysing the casefiles, experiences and clinical evidence, of 30 clients who were rounded up and detained for forced removal to Rwanda between 29 April and 4 May 2024, this research has found:   

  • People were handcuffed and detained with no warning, resulting in shock, fear and confusion, as well as suicidal thoughts and self-harming. Those detained included men and women, whose nationalities included Syrian, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Afghani, Iranian and Sudanese. 
  • All were seeking asylum. None had a criminal conviction. 80% of the cohort had histories of torture and/or serious ill-treatment, trafficking and mental health conditions, which made them particularly susceptible to suffering harm as a result of detention and also as a result of the threat of removal to a country which they feared.  
  • During the round up, two clients were recorded to have lost consciousness or collapsed during the process of being detained including one woman who fainted. Both were transferred to A&E and then on to an IRC. 
  • 10 did not have any legal representation at the time of their detention and receiving their Notice of Intent for removal to Rwanda. 
  • Trafficking survivors likened their trafficking experience with detention for removal to Rwanda. 
  • There were alarmingly high suicide risk levels and deterioration; Medical Justice clinicians assessed 11 clients, all of whom were found to have mental health conditions, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and all 11 deteriorated in their mental state. 9 of had suicidal thoughts, 2 had self-harmed and 1 attempted suicide shortly after they were detained. 8 expressed that they will or would take their own life if they were forcibly removed to Rwanda. 
  • With a surge of people arriving into detention who have complex healthcare needs a, the dysfunction of detention safeguards was acutely evident, failing to identify, protect and route vulnerable individuals out of detention. None of the 30 people had a Rule 35 (1) or (2) safeguarding report completed as should have happened, including for those who were suicidal.  
  • People were held in detention for up to 50 days which the Home Office justified by stating that a flight was planned within a “reasonable timeframe” even though flights were not imminent in reality and never took off.   
  • The harm caused by detention continued after clients were released back into the community. 

 This picture of harm is what has characterised many mass round-ups for highly publicised charter deportation flights. 

 

Ahmad*, a torture survivor, was in bed when four people entered his room. One was carrying a shield, another carried what he thought was a gun.  He was handcuffed and taken by force from his bedroom. For Ahmad, this was a terrifying trigger of past experiences of being tortured. For the Home Office, it was an opportunity to film and broadcast Ahmad’s ordeal (what Ahmad thought was a gun was in fact a video camera) and to publicise the cruelty inflicted on those targeted for deportation to Rwanda. 

 

Mark* told Medical Justice after he was released that he is “terrified” to report as required to the Home Office that he will be re-detained.   

 

Serena* asked when she will be able to leave and was told “you’ll see the outside when you’re in Rwanda”. 

 

“This dossier evidences the predictable and severe harm caused by the 2024 mass round-up for the Rwanda charter flight – it’s nothing short of a tragedy that it’s so similar to our last dossier on round-ups for deportation charter flights. The new government should abandon its plans to expand detention and ramp up deportation flights that will cause more harm, knowingly – harm that is avoidable, and indeed not accidental. 

We agree with the British Medical Association that IRCs should be phased out.  Meanwhile, increasing detention before any of the Brook House Inquiry recommendations have been implemented is simply an afront to human decency.” – Ariel Plotkin, Medical Justice Researcher 

 

  

*Not their real names 

 

Download the report “You’ll see the outside when you’re in Rwanda”: Mistreatment in UK Detention and Mass Round Ups for Forced Removals” 

 

Notes 

  1. Only 1 of 33 of the Brook House Inquiry’s recommendations has been agreed by the Home Office 
  2. Medical Justice is the only charity that sends independent volunteer clinicians to visit clients detained in IRCs to document their scars of torture, deterioration of health and injuries sustained during violent incidents.  Each year we assist more than 500 people held in immigration detention each year. We publish research, undertake policy work and strategic litigation, and act as the secretariat for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Immigration Detention. Medical Justice was appointed as a Core Participant of the Brook House Inquiry (BHI) due to its extensive first-hand experience of the clinical safeguarding and healthcare failures in IRCs .  Our comprehensive evidence submitted to BHI was pivotal in demonstrating a causal link between the complete failure of clinical safeguards and the violent abuse uncovered.