Detained people being held beyond legal time limit

To coincide with international migrants’ day, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) is publishing its 2022 national annual report for the immigration detention estate (IDE). This provides a comprehensive overview of key themes and trends across the IDE throughout the year, including:

• the significant negative impact of indeterminate detention in immigration removal centres (IRCs) on people’s mental health, in one case for over a thousand days.
• the continued detention of individuals beyond the point at which bail was granted or release was authorised, in some cases by many months in IRCs and beyond the legal time limit in short-term holding facilities (STHFs).
• the increasing numbers of vulnerable people entering detention, particularly those with mental health needs, and the maintained detention of many who have been assessed as too vulnerable to be held.
• the continued removal of prescribed medication from those detained at STHFs, despite the serious health risks this poses when there is no healthcare provision.

Elisabeth Davies, National Chair of the IMB said:

‘This report evidences another challenging year in immigration detention and highlights the need, now more than ever, for local IMBs to be the eyes and the ears of the general public in places of detention.

In early 2024 we will be moving to a new format national annual report that will cover Boards’ findings for 2023 across both the prison and immigration estate’.