Immigration Removal Centres in the UK are so harmful that Medical Justice believes the only solution is to close them down. Meanwhile, we aim to assist as many immigration detainees as we can and to campaign for lasting change.
Immigration detention in the UK is arbitrary and indefinite. It is not part of any criminal sentence nor is it ordered by a judge, yet there were 17,219 instances of detention of men, women and children in 2020 in immigration removal centres (IRCs), mostly run by private companies, and in mainstream prisons. Many have mental and physical scars of torture and other forms of persecution. Detainees’ medical conditions are often exacerbated by, and sometimes caused by, prolonged detention and inadequate healthcare.
Issues in immigration detention include:
What is Medical Justice
Medical Justice was founded in 2005 by an immigration detainee on hunger-strike, and the independent volunteer doctor who visited him at Harmondsworth IRC at the request of a detainee befriender. Even though the detainee was on the verge of organ failure, the Home Office refused to transfer him to hospital until a High Court judge ordered them to do so. After being discharged from hospital, he and other ex-detainees, befrienders and doctors formed Medical Justice. We then started to get other doctors in to visit detainees. In 2006, we negotiated a protocol with the Home Office to formalise access for independent doctors.
Today we have 10 paid workers who liaise with volunteer doctors and a network of lawyers, campaigners, and ex-detainees. We handled 833 detainee referrals in the last financial year. Our volunteer doctors visited all the UK’s immigration removal centres (IRCs) to document detainees’ scars of torture and medical conditions, as well as challenge instances of medical mistreatment.
We assist detained men and women whose histories may include being victims of torture, trafficking, and rape. Some detainees have lived in the UK for decades, and have spouses, children and grandchildren here. Parents and children are often separated by detention and deportation.
Many of those detained are traumatised, having survived war, detention without charge or trial, torture, or rape in their own country. Many endure perilous journeys only to get unexpectedly detained in the UK, where they may relive past traumas of imprisonment. Some have serious physical and mental conditions.
We use medical evidence to challenge medical mistreatment of detainees and document the toxic effect of indefinite detention. We hold the government to account and campaign for lasting change through policy work, strategic litigation, public and parliamentary awareness raising, and mobilising medical professionals. Medical Justice acts as the secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Immigration Detention.
After 15 years of visiting sick detainees, our Vision remains unchanged - that the harm being caused by IRCs is so widespread that the only solution is to close them down (a view now also held by the British Medical Association). In time we will succeed in that aim. In the interim, we work to reform the institutions and to stand up for the rights of those incarcerated within them.
