Open%20borders%20The%20case%20against%20immigration%20controls%20-%20Teresa%20Hayter

120 Open Borders
detention to ensure that they are readily understood by all involved and that detention
is used for the shortest possible time.
In particular, Ramsbotham recommended, as have many other authorities,
that detainees should be given written reasons for their detention and that
there should be ‘judicial oversight’ of decisions to detain. However the Labour
government’s white paper claimed that ‘There is no reason to believe that
the administrative process has led to people being improperly detained.’ Its
1999 Act, in spite of expectations to the contrary, introduced no provision
of a judicial element in decisions to detain. There is not even any proposal to
provide detailed and specific written reasons for a decision to detain; merely
a ‘checklist’, to be ticked by officials.
The only recourse that detainees have is to apply for bail. Until Labour
instituted automatic bail hearings (see p. 121), whether detainees did so
depended, however, on whether they had determined lawyers, which
probably depended on whether they had visitors. Above all, success
depended, and continues to depend, on whether they happened to be visited
by people who were willing to stand bail for them, or to find others who were.
Commonly two sureties of £2,000 each are required. Although detainees
have sometimes been released on much lower sureties, adjudicators have
been known to demand larger amounts in court in front of detainees, thus
putting enormous pressure on supporters to up the amount they are offering.
Few asylum detainees have local contacts who can help them. Local support
groups arrange visits, but who gets these visits depends on luck, for example
on whether another detainee gives a name to a visitor. Until recently there
was no presumption of liberty, as there is in criminal cases. Detainees and
their sureties have to convince an adjudicator that they will not abscond,
that they have an address to go to, and that someone will make sure they
report at police stations and turn up in court. An Algerian, one of the sample
of asylum seekers cited in Amnesty’s Cell Culture, was refused bail four times,
told by one adjudicator that he had ‘no incentive to comply with any
conditions’ and by another that ‘I do not believe I have to give reasons. I
think there is a chance the appellant will not attend court’; a month later he
was suddenly released on temporary admission, after over a year in
detention, and granted asylum. Bail is granted or denied on the whim of adjudicators.
The Campsfield Monitor, produced by the Campaign to Close
Campsfield, relates the following in its July 1997 issue:
... I went to stand bail for a detained asylum seeker. A touching family scene; a father,
mother and rather bright four-year-old in a public place, an immigration court ... the
infant runs first to one parent, then to the other. ... This family group remains together
for five hours, moving from room to room. ... Then they separate. The father is led off
by a private Group 4 guard. ... Back to prison; there is to be no bail. The adjudicator
refuses to say why.
The mother contains her grief just as far as the stairs ... then she throws her shawl
over her head, collapses on the floor, and howls. ...