Through solidarity, mutual aid and direct action we CAN stop the dawn raids! Working with asylum seekers from across the city, No Borders Glasgow is looking at practical ways of making the dawn raids in Glasgow more difficult and more costly for the Home Office to carry out.
The New Year has seen continuing protests and direct action at the Brand Street Immigration Centre (please come along to the Saturday morning vigils). The next step is to mount early morning 'watches' for Immigration Office dawn raid teams. These snatch squads operate under cover of darkness. Together we can shine a light on the reality of "administrative removals", and make it as difficult as possible for them to abduct families.
We're organising a rota for watches now. If you can spare a few hours early in the morning for one or two mornings a week watching out for dawn raids so that the alarm can be sounded - please contact us.
noborders-glasgow@riseup.net
or leave a message on 0141 423 9055
NCADC News Service
The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) has received a number of calls in the last two weeks from people who went to Lunar House in Croydon to claim asylum. They told us that they have been *'Tagged' fitted with an electronic monitoring device around their ankle. A monitoring unit has been installed in the accommodation address where they 'must' reside. When they are required to be at home, the tag will send a signal to a monitoring unit and the monitoring unit sends a signal to the monitoring control centre. Those 'tagged' have also been required to comply with reporting restrictions, that is weekly/monthly visits to their nearest immigration reporting/enforcement centre.
We have checked around and '*Tagging' Electronic Monitoring of new asylum seekers has arrived in the UK. A reversal of Home Office policy means that no one will be able to *refuse to be tagged if the Home Office requires it, a refusal is certain to result in detention.
Contact Management (CM): This is the Home Office term for controlling an asylum seeker from the moment they notify the Home Office of their arrival in the UK, till acceptance or rejection of their claim. Tagging is part & parcel of CM and the Tag will remain on the person for the duration of the claim.
All eleven reporting/enforcement centres in the UK now have a person called the 'Electronic Monitoring Champion' (Wonder horses) who will be responsible for overseeing 'Tagging'. NCADC has contacted a number of centres to try and obtain written material on Electronic Monitoring; on each occasion we drew a blank. We spoke to some of the 'wonder horses'; they were clueless as to what their job entailed. These posts seem to be a very recent creation by the Home Office and no training as yet that we know of has been given to the staff.
NCADC would like to make it clear that we are totally opposed to 'Tagging', this '*stigmata' is an unacceptable invasion of an asylum seekers person. Further, where the monitoring device is installed in a house/flat/hostel, it turns that person's home - a place of privacy and safety, into a detention centre.
John O for NCADC
Background: Section 36 of the Immigration and Asylum (treatment of claimants etc) Act 2004 allows for the electronic monitoring (Tagging) of those liable to be detained under the Immigration Acts. This includes asylum seekers, illegal entrants, those found working in breach of their conditions of stay, overstayers, people subject to further examination at a port of entry, and those refused leave to enter.
Consent of an individual to be tagged was not a statutory requirement of the Act but consent was introduced as a matter of policy outside the rules. However, in November of last year Tony McNulty rescinded this concession and changed the policy to allow the Immigration Service to draw up 'contact management' plans without first seeking the consent of the individual. This means that an asylum seeker on applying for asylum will be told he will be tagged, if an individual refuses to be 'Tagged' they will be detained. The same applies to anyone else in breach of immigration rules; accept tagging or be detained.
People in detention can apply for 'Tagging' to their Immigration Case Officer, however there is no information packs available to detainees as to how they would apply and the conditions of the 'Tagging'.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) opens a Glasgow office in the week that the Home Office launches an IOM-run scheme to "incentivise" asylum claimants and people refused asylum to leave the country.
"Giving people "incentives" does not make them safe. We know that in some countries, failed asylum seekers are put in prison on return and can only secure their release if they pay a bribe. We could now be exposing them to the possibility of further extortion if there is a perception that they have money". Kath Sainsbury, National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns
From NCADC news service:
54,000 asylum claimants/failed asylum seekers received a letter on January 1st 2006 offering them £3,000 a piece to leave the UK. The offer to all those claiming asylum before 31st December 2005 will last for 6 months and is conditional that they withdraw their asylum claims or if they have appealed against refusal, withdraw the appeal. The Home Office says the money - "increased reintegration assistance" - is to help them resettle in their country of origin and have even coined a word for the exercise - "Incentivising" - though cynics may have a different interpretation and see "Incentivising" as a "cheap bribe".
NCADC feel this offer is misguided and dangerous. Asylum seekers from such places as DR Congo, Somalia, Uganda etc. living in hardship and destitution in the UK at the moment may see this "incentive" as an immediate way out of their suffering.
Kath Sainsbury of NCADCs North East and Scotland office said:
"The people who have already received the letters and contacted NCADC are worried that they are being forced to return. When the scheme is explained to them, they have said that they cannot return because their lives are at risk.
"If people genuinely wish to return to a country that has stabilized and holds no danger, then providing they are not coerced into returning, it is entirely appropriate that we should help them to rebuild their lives, but I have serious concerns about this scheme.
The term 'voluntary' becomes meaningless if people are returning to danger."
http://www.ncadc.org.uk/newszine66/bribe.htm
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In Glasgow
The IOM opened their new Glasgow office at the Centrum Building, 38 Queen Street, this week [map] . This follows an advertising campaign for their "voluntary" returns programme on buses serving areas where asylum seekers are housed, and comes at a time when increasing numbers of asylum seekers in the city are being refused and evicted from their homes into utter destitution.
No Borders Glasgow would advise anyone considering taking up this offer to think twice about contacting the IOM. Unless you are absolutely sure you want to withdraw your asylum application and any hope of staying in the UK, it may be very risky to identify yourself as someone who is prepared to return home. Should you change your mind after being interviewed, it may be held against you in an asylum appeal. If you have already been refused asylum and enquire about voluntary return, you may be targeted for forced removal if you change your mind.
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Whats wrong the IOM?
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) is a multi-national inter-governmental organisation, founded in 1951. It’s aim is to aid nation states in the management and exploitation of global migration. Their basic policy is not concerned with the well being of people but the well being of economies. They have been criticised by human rights, refugee and aid agencies across the globe for undermining genuine humanitarian work, and worse. Amnesty International has criticised the role of the IOM as an "alternative agency for states where they prefer to avoid their human rights obligations" For more info on the IOM, click here
The Brand Street Immigration Centre gates were blocked again on the morning of 12th January.
No Borders activists locked the gates at around 5am, well before dawn, and the chains remained in place for over four hours until being cut by police shortly after 9am. Meanwhile, the Home Office snatch squad vans were sealed inside the compound ensuring that no dawn raids could take place.
The action preceded the arrival of a candlelit vigil planned and attended by other asylum-seeker support groups who were there to protest against the injustice of British immigration policy and the inhumane treatment of asylum-seeking families in Glasgow.
This blockade and vigil follows others that have taken place during the holiday period. The weekly vigils on Saturday mornings are attracting an ever-growing attendance as awareness of the horrors of unjust immigration procedures spreads throughout different communities in the city.
The Home Office building at Brand Street in Ibrox re-opened this morning, 4th January, after the New Year Holidays. Activists from No Borders Glasgow were also there, picketing from 7 till 10:30am.
From the movement of the Securicor vans it's believed that one person has been picked up to be detained. No Borders are calling for people to respond by coming along to Brand Street tomorrow morning: Thursday 5th January, 7:00AM.
Staff started arriving as usual around 8AM, slipping on the pavement and shivering in the fog. At around this time two Securicor vans arrived at Brand Street. Sometime later, one of them left with two fluorescent jacketed staff in the front and no-one in the back. The sun was up by then, so this wasn't quite a dawn raid. The van returned a short time later with the same drivers and someone in the back. It went in the gate and reversed right up to the Immigration Office's back door. One person, whom nothing is currently known of, was taken inside.
As nothing is yet known of this individual or their case it is / will be hard to find out details of where they have been taken or why. However it's believed, based on previous experience and observed practice, that the only explanation for the van's journey was that it was picking up an asylum seeker and taking that person to Brand Street for "processing" prior to their being taken away to be detained, possibly prior to their removal from this country. Perhaps they feel it will be easier to get away with deporting isolated individuals rather than families with children.
Based on these facts, No Borders Glasgow has called for people to respond to the Home Office's action by protesting at the Brand Street offices tomorrow from 7AM. Furthermore, so that no disappearance goes unmarked, every time that a removal takes place we call on people to respond the same way the next morning.
