The Home Office has been accused of “spying” on asylum seekers after it was reported the department secretly monitors their debit card use in order to track their whereabouts. Individuals have had their asylum support withdrawn for making trips to see relatives or attending court hearings because officials accused them of venturing out of their “authorised” city, according to The Sunday Times. The newspaper reported on one case in which a teenage schoolgirl who fled religious persecution in east Africa bought a train ticket using a donation from a local church to attend her father’s wake.  In another case study, a Sudanese man living in the Midlands had his benefits withdrawn after attending a court hearing in London.

The surveillance is said to be carried out through Aspen cards, a form of debit card issued to asylum seekers to enable them to buy food and basic supplies, for which they receive a weekly allowance of £37.75. In return for this, they are forbidden from leaving their residence for more than a week without permission. If they are believed to have done so, asylum seekers are reportedly told they will lose their support unless they persuade the Home Office they are still destitute within five days, and if they respond late or with inadequate evidence, their benefits are suspended and they risk homelessness.

Read more: Independent, https://is.gd/iRtgHg

David Bolt Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, call for evidence in relation to the Home Secretary's commission to report annually on the working of the Home Office’s working of the Adults at Risk process.
 
In line with Stephen Shaw’s recommendation, in his report ‘Assessment of government progress in implementing the report on the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons’ (published in July 2018), I have been commissioned by the Home Secretary to report annually on the working of the Home Office’s ‘Adults at Risk’ (AaR) policy.

My inspectors have begun work in preparation for the first annual report, which I aim to send to the Home Secretary in May 2019. This initial review will look at how effective and efficient the Home Office is in identifying vulnerability both at the point where an individual is being considered for detention and also during the time someone is held in detention. It will cover detainees held in Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) and those held in prisons under immigration powers.

I am now inviting parties with relevant knowledge and expertise, including NGOs, academics, think tanks, faith groups and representative bodies, to write to me by 14 February 2019 with evidence about the working of AaR, with supporting case studies and statistical evidence where possible.

I am also happy to receive evidence from individuals, including those who have experienced immigration detention, however please note that my remit does not extend to investigating or making decisions about individual cases. This remains a Home Office responsibility.

As well as seeking evidence for this first annual AaR report, I am also interested in establishing a regular consultation process with key stakeholders, along similar lines to ICIBI’s existing forums. The main purpose of a new ‘AaR Forum’ would be to inform the scope of future AaR annual reports and any related inspections. It would be helpful if organisations interested in becoming a member of an AaR Forum could refer to this in their evidence submission. Like the existing forums, the aim would be to meet 2-3 times a year, with the first meeting in May.

You can email your response to: chiefinspector@icibi.gov.uk

Or write to: ICIBI, 5th Floor, Globe House, 89 Eccleston Square, London, SW1V 1PN

Please note that submissions may be cited in the final report.

Source: Gov UK. https://is.gd/7gUHkA

The white paper’s differential treatment of ‘low risk’ and ‘high risk’ nationalities, ‘high skilled’ and ‘low skilled’ people, will create new hierarchies of race and class – and intolerable hardship.

The UK’s future skills-based immigration system, seeks to justify the removal of free movement rights of citizens of the European Economic Area (EEA) (1) by principles of fairness which dictate that all nationalities should be treated consistently. It would be a fine thing if such a fundamental principle of fairness were adhered to, and race, ethnicity and nationality were finally to become irrelevant in immigration policy. It is however a retrograde step to achieve equality by removing rights from those who have them, and subjecting all to the same dismal state of abject rightlessness.

In fact, though, the proposals set out in the white paper do not achieve equality, or even seek it. They seek instead to entrench existing divisions based on nationality and class. The only change is that the dividing line is no longer ‘EU’ or ‘EEA’ vs ‘non-EEA’ or ‘third country national’, but instead, ‘low-risk’ vs ‘high-risk’ nationalities, who are to be treated differently in terms of ease of entry for visits, study and work in the UK, and ‘high-skilled’ vs ’low-skilled’ migrants, the former welcome, the latter not.

Read more: Frances Webber, IRR News, https://is.gd/Ex05qE

The Home Office has been accused of “spying” on asylum seekers after it was reported the department secretly monitors their debit card use in order to track their whereabouts. Individuals have had their asylum support withdrawn for making trips to see relatives or attending court hearings because officials accused them of venturing out of their “authorised” city, according to The Sunday Times. The newspaper reported on one case in which a teenage schoolgirl who fled religious persecution in east Africa bought a train ticket using a donation from a local church to attend her father’s wake.  In another case study, a Sudanese man living in the Midlands had his benefits withdrawn after attending a court hearing in London.

The surveillance is said to be carried out through Aspen cards, a form of debit card issued to asylum seekers to enable them to buy food and basic supplies, for which they receive a weekly allowance of £37.75. In return for this, they are forbidden from leaving their residence for more than a week without permission. If they are believed to have done so, asylum seekers are reportedly told they will lose their support unless they persuade the Home Office they are still destitute within five days, and if they respond late or with inadequate evidence, their benefits are suspended and they risk homelessness.

Read more: Independent, https://is.gd/iRtgHg

Demonstration  Jamaican High Commission, Monday 4th February  - 1:00 pm

1-2 Prince Consort Road London SW7 2BZ

UK and Jamaican Government’s plan first mass chartered flight removal of Jamaicans since January 2017, and the first since the Windrush Scandal broke Flight scheduled for 6th February (or any time between 5th and 15th February)

Movement for Justice have called a demonstration at the Jamaican High Commission demanding that the Jamaican Government end this collusion with these racist, unjust charter flights which destroy thousands of British Jamaican families and relationships. Family and friends of those at risk of removal will join us on Monday and detainees will speak out via a phone link.

Movement for Justice is in touch with 16 detainees who are at risk of removal on the charter flight to Jamaica. They include Owen who has been in the UK since 1977 when he arrived as a 4 year old, and has three young children here; and Twane Morgan, formerly a British Soldier who developed PTSD as a result of his service.

Who are the people at risk of removal?
•7 came to the UK as children, 5 were under six years old.
* 11 are connected to the Windrush Generation through grandparents, aunties and uncles.
*  8 have British born children
* 1 has ten British grandchildren
* Years in UK: 41yrs, 20yrs, 19yrs, 14yrs, 17yrs, 18yrs, 16yrs, 21yrs, 14yrs, 8yrs
* 9 have parents and siblings in the UK
* 1 has a Windrush Generation grandfather who served in the British Army

They all have been singled out for past criminal convictions for which they have served their sentences, many have served much longer than their sentences while in immigration detention.

Several of the detainees want to speak out to the press, get in touch if you are interested in interviewing them.

Source: Movement for Justice http://www.movementforjustice.org/

A cross-party group of MPs is confident it will be able to use an amendment to the immigration bill going through parliament to stop people being held indefinitely in immigration detention centres. Harriet Harman, the chair of the joint committee on human rights, has persuaded the former Brexit secretary David Davis and other former Conservative ministers to back the move, which would stop thousands of foreigners facing deportation every year being held in detention for more than 28 days. The Home Office has yet to approve the proposal but Harman, a former deputy Labour leader, said she was “very confident” her amendment would be accepted because of the strength of her case and the breadth of cross-party support. She said new figures released to her committee by the Home Office backed the case for reform, because they disproved claims that most of those held in detention centres for more than 28 days pending deportation were in the category of “foreign national offenders” – people who have previously served at least a year in jail.

In the 1990s there were only 250 places where migrants might be held in detention before being deported, and even then these were often not full, she told the Guardian. “Now we’ve got 2,500 places, and they are bursting at the seams.” Thousands of people every year are held for more than a month in the detention centres and in some cases people have been kept locked up for two years or more. Harman said that in the past it was often assumed most of those detained for more than a month were foreign national offenders. But the Home Office sent figures to her committee showing that in 2017 10,331 people were detained for more than 28 days and 7,015 – about 70% – were not in the offender category.

Read more: Andrew Sparrow, Guardian, https://is.gd/jl6SWh

The draft Bill has faced criticism for not going far enough to tackle the ways in which the criminal justice system enables the narratives of domestic abuse to go unchecked. The draft Bill contains no proposals to abolish the questioning of victims in criminal cases regarding their previous sexual history, it does not address the ‘50 shades of grey’ homicide defences and nor does it challenge the overriding presumption in family cases of contact at all costs.

Step Up Migrant Women (SUMW), a coalition of more than 30 groups including Southall Black Sisters, Amnesty International UK, End Violence Against Women Coalition and the Latin American Women’s Rights Service, urged the government to ensure equal protection for migrant survivors of domestic. ‘This is particularly alarming, as the Bill itself recognises the ‘significant vulnerability’ of migrant victims who fear deportation as a result of coming forward,’ commented Lucila Granada, director of the Latin American Women’s Rights Service. ‘Every day we support women who are unable to trust that the police and the law will prioritise their lives and their safety simply because they are migrants. Deterring migrant women from reporting crimes gives impunity to perpetrators. We need a Bill that doesn’t leave migrant women behind. We need safe reporting pathways, appropriate support, and a fair chance for migrant women to be able to break free from violence.’

Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty UK, said that then Bill its current form ‘barely tinkers’ at the edges of what was necessary to ensure migrant women were treated fairly. ‘To truly be ground-breaking, the Bill must ensure all women can access housing and welfare support and report abuse without fear of immigration enforcement. Otherwise perpetrators will continue to use the immigration status of their victims as a weapon to control and abuse their victims.’

According to the coalition, whilst the Bill recognises the need to overcome barriers for women with insecure immigration status, it offered ‘little more than current provisions aimed at addressing the problem’. ‘Guidance is already in place for police forces to support victims, but in reality the police often share data with the Home Office and domestic violence victims are treated as suspects by immigration enforcement. The Bill introduces nothing on a statutory footing to prevent this from happening,’ SUMW said. ‘Instead of ensuring migrant women can access vital support services such as refuges, the Government suggests some victims of domestic abuse “may be best served by returning to their country of origin and, where it is available, to the support of their family and friends”.’

The draft Bill does include £300,000 funding for BAME organisations but, the group argues, that will ‘go little way to support a sector that is hugely underfunded’.

Theresa May has long made tackling domestic abuse a centrepiece of her legislative agenda; yet the Government’s commitment to providing multifaceted solutions to domestic abuse rings comparatively hollow in light of the steady decline in funding for women’s refuges, from £31.2 million in 2010 to £23.9 million in 2017 as pointed out by Women’s Aid. To decisively place the onus for preventing domestic abuse on the perpetrator, we need to change the dynamics of abuse and control that have been allowed to permeate both within and beyond the current legal system.

Source: Helena Spector, ‘the Justice Gap’, https://is.gd/YO6TY7

The High Court has today 22/01/2019, handed down judgment in the case of R (ZS) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 75 (Admin). This claim challenged the Home Office’s failure to implement the so-called ‘Dubs Amendment’, s. 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, which required the Secretary of State to make arrangements to transfer asylum-seeking children from Europe. This power was used to transfer a number of children from the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp in late 2016. ZS was one of the children considered for transfer at that time but he was refused for failing to meet the criteria set by the Home Office, despite significant vulnerabilities.

This claim mounted a wide-ranging challenge to the Home Office’s implementation of the Dubs Amendment, under which fewer than 250 children have been transferred to the UK, despite ministers controversially allocating merely 480 places for children transferred from Europe. ZS is one of the many children still resident in France hoping for transfer to the UK. ZS has not been able to arrange a referral for transfer to the UK, in part because the relevant guidance governing transfer was not published. The Government eventually published this guidance on the first day of the High Court hearing of ZS’s claim. When giving the judgment, Mr Justice Ouseley agreed that, as a result of the failure to publish this policy, “at least some French social workers were not aware of their role in making referrals”. He held that the policy should have been published in the UK and that it was not fair to leave the representatives of potential transferees in the UK unaware of the rules, criteria or processes necessary for transfer.

The High Court therefore granted ZS a declaration that the failure by the Home Office to publish its guidance on referrals was unlawful. In its judgment, the High Court also agreed with previous decisions by the Court of Appeal in concluding that the Home Office was in breach of its duty of candour when it failed to give ZS reasons for its refusal to transfer him to the UK.

More than two years after the passage of the Dubs Amendment, which called on the government to act ‘as soon as possible’, a significant proportion of the already very small number [480] of places available for such vulnerable children – like ZS - to be transferred remains unfilled. Today’s judgment is another reminder of the Home Office’s unwillingness to give proper effect to the Dubs Amendment. The Government’s failure to publish the policy which would help children like ZS to come to the UK until the eleventh hour in the course of this litigation placed yet another obstacle in the way of vulnerable children seeking referral to the UK.

Source: Duncan Lewis, https://is.gd/6e5ftL