We continue to resist the UK Government’s detention of migrants

HubMP2012

DECEMBER 1, 2025

By Bill MacKeith

Former detainee: “While I was at Campsfield I saw many people struggle to cope with depression and a system designed to break people down. You are treated as if you are a risk to society when all you are trying to do is reach safety and build a life.”

The UK detains more migrants – including people who will be recognised as refugees – for longer than any other country in Europe, without time limit, and without proper judicial oversight.

An increase in immigration detention was already under way before the latest attacks on the vulnerable announced by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

But it ain’t necessarily so. Ten years ago, following the build-up of the anti-detention movement inside and outside of detention, and two critical reports by ex-judge Stephen Shaw, the UK government pursued a “detention reform programme” to detain fewer people, for shorter periods, and investigate alternatives to detention. Four detention centres closed in 2015-2018, and numbers detained fell sharply.

This welcome pause was reversed with the opening of Hassockfield (Derwentside) women-only detention centre in County Durham in 2019 and the announcement in April 2022 of the reopening of detention centres at Campsfield (near Oxford) and Haslar (Gosport, Portsmouth) as part of the Rwanda deportation flights plan. Last year, the incoming Labour Government, instead of cancelling the reopenings along with the Rwanda flights, doubled down on the anti-migrant programme, saying more detention was necessary to increase deportations (‘removals’).

Now Campsfield is about to reopen following a £70 million ‘refurbishment’ by builders Galliford Try: the Detained Duty Advice Scheme (DDAS) has posted a December rota for the centre. Campsfield will be run by MITIE, whose record at Harmomdsworth elicited a scorching report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons only last year – “the worst conditions [ever] seen in immigration detention.”

So, the continuity of Labour and Conservative Government policy has been reinforced. I say Labour Government, as Labour Party members voted at Conference two or three times in the Corbyn years to end immigration detention altogether. The Labour Campaign for Free Movement has a particular focus on detention. 

The 25-year campaign to close Campsfield ended in 2018 with its closure, so there was a basis for the establishment of a broad Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed. Last year Cherwell District Council joined Kidlington Parish, Oxford City and Oxfordshire County Council and the newly elected local MP Calum Miller in opposing on humanitarian grounds the plans to reopen and expand Campsfield. As at Haslar, the two-phase plan involves refurbishment and new-build: at the two sites this would bring a total of 1,000 more detention beds.

To get round the solid local opposition, the Government will pursue a ‘Crown Development’ route for the new-build that cuts out the local planning authority’s decision-making power. Effectively, one Government minister invites another to agree with its plans despite the clear wishes of local people.

It looks grim. But the new Coalition to Close Campsfield will persist, mindful of the fact that perseverance is key and that over the last 20 years local people have seen off Government plans to open an 800-bed asylum seekers accommodation centre on MoD land at Bicester, an 800-bed closed detention centre on the same site, and an expansion of Campsfield in 2015.

Immigration Bail: Still a Struggle for Justice

For over 20,000 people detained each year in the UK, to apply for release on bail is a fundamental right which they need to be able to exercise. But it hard to do so. A spin-off of the Campsfield campaign is the Bail Observation Project. For locals visiting people in detention and supporting them at bail hearings, what they observed made them so concerned that they decided to demand improvements. The problem was a lack of hard data to back up their contentions. So, a team of 20 lay people developed a questionnaire, received training from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, then observed 330 bail hearings and published two reports in 2011 and 2013. Some improvements were made.

A third report, ‘Immigration Bail: Still a Struggle for Justice – hearings observed 2013-23’, has just been published. It shows how the right to seek bail is still severely curtailed and makes recommendations for improvement. The report has been launched in Parliament and in Oxford University.  The report urges others to scrutinise bail hearings of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and gives advice about how to do so. The inside cover of the report provides a summary of the work of the Campaign to Close Campsfield and its successors.

Last four verses of Campsfield House Hotel by Jean-Louis N’tadi (Republic of Congo)

Written at St Francis House, Oxford, 2005, Translated by Cristina Viti:

Scandalised citizens march and campaign

For the deadly hotel to pack up and go

No one in the world, and this should be plain

Is an ‘illegal’ human soul.

Noxious hotel, Campsfield House, house of grief

You’re like a fiend locking heroes in coffins

Shutting them out of the biblical feast

With hunger and despair in the offing.

May your evil kingdom vanish tonight

May you close your deadly gates

May your subjects, the families you blight

No longer sleep on hewn slate.

May no man bird or beast ever know quiet or ease

As long as this plague of the land continues to rage

As long as the rotten hotels of no truth and no grace

Shame England, the kingdom of unity and peace. 

Bill MacKeith is a vice president of Oxford Trades Council and has campaigned against Campsfield since before it opened in 1993.

Main image: Outside Campsfield, 22nd November 2025, c/o Coalition to Keep Campsfield Closed