When the walls are closing I feel I can’t win. I have got lost in this life. (asylum seeker in detention, 1998) Approximately 114,473 people (including women and children) were held in immigration detention in Australia between 1997 and 2012.…
High-income countries have been adopting increasingly restrictive immigration policies and practices over the last decade, including the systematic detention of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. Such policies are now implemented by middle- and low-income countries as well (e.g. Mauritania, Libya,…
Over more than ten years of research in Europe and beyond, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented serious violations of children’s rights arising from immigration detention of children.[i] Children may be arbitrarily detained, held in cells with unrelated adults, and…
Spain has a number of specially designated administrative detention centres for immigration detention; most are along its Mediterranean coastline, with one in Madrid, the capital. These Foreigner Internment Centres (Centros de Internamiento de Extranjeros – CIE) are operated by the…
The Immigration Bureau of the Ministry of Justice of Japan manages a number of immigration detention facilities across the country where foreign nationals arriving or remaining in Japan with irregular status are detained, as they are in many other countries.…
The T Don Hutto Residential Centre is not a nursing home, as its name might imply. It is a privately run for-profit immigration detention facility near Austin, Texas, that confines undocumented female immigrants who are designated for deportation by the…
Sweden is generally considered to have high standards of immigrant detention. However, a recent study conducted in Swedish detention centres suggests that irrespective of the high standards life in detention still poses a huge threat to the health and wellbeing…
According to the Australian government, Australia’s response to refugees in need of formal resettlement is generous. Australia operates a formal UNHCR resettlement process, whereby after having complied with Australia’s health and character requirements, refugees are offered protection in Australia. For…
People who arrive by air in the Czech Republic claiming asylum are transferred to a ‘reception centre’ at Prague’s Vaclav Havel Airport. Although they are deprived of their liberty, have limited access to fresh air and to the internet, and…
A new airport under construction in Berlin will include a 1,000 square metre complex with video surveillance surrounded by a three-metre-high fence. This facility will become a part of a wider ‘extraterritorial’ fast-track asylum procedure, already in place at five…