19th July 2024
Dear Yvette
Congratulations on your recent appointment to the post of Home Secretary.
I am writing to you as the Director of the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) UK. We accompany people seeking sanctuary here who are let down by a broken system, detained, made destitute, and left vulnerable to exploitation and ill-health.
Policies of the last government, including the Illegal Migration Act and the plan to forcibly transfer people seeking asylum to Rwanda, abandoned the very principle of asylum itself.
I would like to thank you for scrapping the cruel and unworkable Rwanda scheme. Now, this new government has an important opportunity to build an asylum system that is just, humane, and reflects our values as a society.
There are three urgent priorities we believe are fundamental to this endeavour:
- Restore the Right to Asylum
If any of us were ever forced from our homes, we would want the opportunity to rebuild our lives safely elsewhere. However, the Nationality and Borders Act and other inadmissibility rules build long delays into the asylum system, while the Illegal Migration Act bans most refugees from claiming asylum at all. The vast majority of people ruled inadmissible will be impossible to remove, and therefore simply be trapped in indefinite limbo, at risk of destitution and exploitation. These laws punish refugees for how they travel, when the most do not have a choice, and there are virtually no safe, accessible routes for people to seek asylum in the UK.
Such a punitive approach places lives at risk. In 2019, the Foreign Affairs Committee warned that “A policy that focuses exclusively on closing borders will drive migrants to take more dangerous routes and push them into the hands of criminal groups.”1 The deaths of four people in the Channel on Friday 12th July stands, once again, as a sad confirmation of their words. As we mourn these people’s deaths, we also know that they could have been prevented.
We urge you to restore the right to asylum by repealing the Illegal Migration Act and Nationality and Borders Act; committing to examining each asylum claim fairly on its merits, and within the UK; abandoning all measures that punish refugees for how they arrived in the UK; and creating safe routes for people seeking asylum.
- End Immigration Detention
Every year, thousands of people are incarcerated without time limit in prison-like conditions for the purpose of administering immigration procedures. Detention is a profoundly traumatic experience causing long-term harm. Survivors of torture who are detained regularly liken detention to torture. The Independent Inquiry into mistreatment at Brook House in 2017 found a toxic and dehumanising culture and many instances of inhuman and degrading treatment. JRS UK’s recent report, After Brook House: continued abuse in immigration detention, highlights that these are neither anomalous nor historical, but part of an ongoing pattern extending across the UK detention estate. This month, the His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) report following an unannounced inspection of Harmondsworth revealed horrifying conditions, with inspectors stating they were “deeply concerned that some of those held there were at imminent risk of harm.”2 This cannot go on. As Home Secretary, you can show leadership and end immigration detention. People in the asylum and immigration systems should be supported to navigate their claims in the community. Until this is achieved, urgently implementing the Brook House Inquiry recommendations, including a time limit of 28 days on immigration detention, would limit its harm.
- End the Hostile Environment
The Hostile Environment, now formally termed the ‘Compliant Environment’, intentionally marginalises people with precarious immigration status, cutting off access to vital services, including healthcare. It operates partly by embedding immigration control across government departments, public bodies, and civil society. At JRS UK, we work with people who are cut off from all support systems and barred from accessing public funds, left completely destitute and vulnerable to exploitation. Many are afraid to access healthcare they badly need for fear of immigration control. We have also worked with victims of trafficking and exploitation who are afraid to report their experience to the police in case it results in them being detained. These are clear examples of how extending immigration checks across society leaves people vulnerable, divides us against each other and erodes relationships of trust at the heart of our communities.
The impact of the Hostile Environment is far-reaching as we saw in the ‘Windrush’ scandal when British citizens from commonwealth countries were subjected to immigration control, barred from working or accessing public funds, detained and in some cases forcibly removed from the UK. We welcome your commitment to ensuring that a scandal like Windrush can never happen again.3 Everyone in our communities must be able to access vital services and civil society, without fear of immigration control, and no recourse to public funds rules must end.
You have a unique opportunity to improve how we welcome people seeking sanctuary in the UK. Please don’t squander this chance by pandering to voices of division and hostility shouting from the sidelines.
With such a large majority, your party has been handed power on a significant scale. We urge you to deliver a more humane system and help create a society rooted in justice and care for one another.
Yours sincerely,
Sarah Teather
Director
Jesuit Refugee Service UK
1 Foreign Affairs Committee, Responding to irregular migration: a diplomatic route (2019), p.3.
2 Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, in a press release on the report, published 9th July 2024, “Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre: drugs, despair, and decrepit conditions.”
