On 2 September 2024, Right to Remain joined many others to issue a statement opposing the Labour government’s announcement to reopen two of the former immigration detention centres, in Haslar in Gosport and Campsfield in Oxfordshire. 

As Gee Manoharan, Co-director for policy and influencing at Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees (AVID) describes in the Guardian, ‘To expand this inhumane system… isn’t just a misstep, it’s a blatant betrayal of human dignity’. Gee knows what he is talking about: he was once detained himself. 

Right to Remain was originally called the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC). As NCADC, we would often receive desperate calls from people detained, and people worried about losing their families, friends and colleagues to detention, removals and deportations. Anti-detention work is central to our migration justice campaign work. It is also in our DNA, as the name of our campaign network alludes to: ‘These Walls Must Fall’. 

Having always fought against immigration detention, we remember celebrating closures of Haslar detention centre in 2015 and Campsfield House detention centre in 2018, at a time when fewer people or groups knew about immigration detention. In 2024, we were heartened by the sheer number of groups – more than 50! – who joined us to express their opposition to the immigration detention expansion plan and urge the Labour government to choose freedom. But we bitterly regretted having to sign this statement: detention expansion should have never been even contemplated. 

Some might continue to speculate over the new Labour government’s approach to asylum and immigration. To many in our communities, it’s the same Hostile Environment, just under a different government. The timing of this Home Office announcement to ramp up immigration enforcement, less than two weeks after the outbreak of the race riots, is telling. Although many consider the government’s relentless and dehumanising anti-migration policies and narrative to be one of the culprits for the rise of the far right, the lesson is squarely not learned.  

It is also a stark reminder that migrants and people seeking asylum will remain a convenient political football for politicians. The same Yvette Cooper, the current Home Secretary who is endorsing the detention expansion plan, was not so long ago the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, who oversaw the Immigration Detention Inquiry. The inquiry concluded ‘The Home Office has shown a shockingly cavalier attitude in its approach to immigration detention and overseen serious failings in almost every area of the immigration detention process’ – it looks like this has now been completely wiped off from the Home Secretary’s memory. 

Unlike the Home Secretary’s memory, our communities’ belief in humanity and solidarity is steady and strong. Right to Remain and These Walls Must Fall are proud to be working with No To Hassockfield (Derwensite IRC) to organise a national demonstration against immigration detention on 19 October.

We must start reconnecting the dots of resistance against detention, deportations, raids and reporting to protect our communities together – and we would like more people to join us. Stay tuned for more announcements about the demonstration and an online rally (more info to be made available soon!) by signing up to our newsletter.

Or get in touch directly with us at contact(at)righttoremain.org.uk for more information. 

Migration is life. No one is illegal. These walls must fall.

In solidarity as always, 

Right to Remain