City of Shame: new Manchester detention centre
Sunday, December 7, 2008

The Home Office has re-opened the immigration detention centre at Manchester airport on Friday. In fact, Borders and Immigration minister Phil Woolas (the one with the pie in the face) was there personally to “unveil” the immigration prison. As if it was something to celebrate!

Just think about it: they can now lock-up 32 people at a time (asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected, students whose study visas have run out, unwanted immigrants who they’ve snatched from their work places, from their family homes or from trams and buses etc.), and Woolas thinks it right to hold some kind of ceremony!

It doesn’t really matter whether this prison (which they now call ‘Pennine House’) is, as the Home Office say, “fit for the 21st century”, or as the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons has said before (and will no doubt say again), “unacceptable”. (This refers to inadequate cooking and washing facilities, lack of ‘fresh air’, and no means of being in touch with family and friends outside!)

It doesn’t really matter whether this prison holds people who will be deported (as the Home Office claim), or people who are just being transferred from one detention centre to the other, and/or released again (as seems to be frequently the case).

When we exposed Carillion plc as the company building the prison we insisted, and we insist again: No Immigration Detention Centres Anywhere!

(Pennine House is a short-term holding facility at Terminal 2 of Manchester airport, managed by the private security company G4S. Find out more here.)
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Posted byManchester No Borders at 9:33 AM