The new government has promised to end the detention of children. This is a major step, and will be the first major liberalisation of detention policy for many years. The Liberal Democrats have made a manifesto pledge to reduce the detention of people who cannot be deported. Both governing parties are committed to a renewed focus on civil liberties and to large cuts in public spending. For all these reasons, now is a historic opportunity to push for widespread reform of the detention system.

Red Pepper magazine and openDemocracy website have published articles on indefinite detention and the Detained Lives campaign. The openDemocracy article is at http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/jerome-phelps/no-release-lives-in-limbo . openDemocracy is a high-profile website that publishes news analysis and debates on current affairs.

Leading human rights solicitor Sue Willman of Pierce Glynn Solicitors will speak at London Detainee Support Group's AGM on whether the current approach to immigration detention comply with the Home Office's human rights obligations. The AGM is at Shoreditch Town Hall Council Chamber at 6:45pm on Monday 21 September 2009. The meeting will also be an update on the progress of the campaign to end indefinite immigration detention.

The High Court today ordered the release of a Somali immigration detainee who has been held for almost two years. The ruling of unlawful detention delivers a devastating blow to the Home Office’s policy of detaining indefinitely Somali immigrants who cannot be deported. It may lead to the release of many more asylum seekers and immigrants, who continue to be detained for periods of years, despite the impossibility of return.

A new paper by London Detainee Support Group gives a disturbing glimpse of the widespread and growing use of indefinite immigration detention across the UK. Charities have seen an almost tripling of the numbers of detainees they are supporting who are detained for extreme periods.