1. Executive Summary

Asylum seekers are often arbitrarily detained for long periods where there is no prospect of imminent removal due to the impossibility of obtaining travel documents. Long-term detention of asylum seekers with deportation orders is particularly common. Torture victims and unaccompanied minors are often inappropriately detained. Delays by NASS in processing applications for support also lead to unnecessarily prolonged detention.

Immigration detainees come from all around the world. They can be detained indefinitely pending their removal from the UK, as there are no statutory time limits for detention, nor automatic reviews of the decision by the Immigration Service to detain. More people are being detained than ever before, a record 2,540 at the last official snapshot, of whom 72% were asylum-seekers, whose applications for asylum will in most cases have been refused and who face removal to their country of origin.

Annual Report 2004 – 2005

ABOUT LDSG

The London Detainee Support Group (LDSG) is a non-political and non-religious registered charity that befriends and supports asylum-seekers and others in detention, primarily at Harmondsworth and Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centres. Detainees are held indefinitely without charge and without automatic access to bail hearings. Many have no connections in the UK, little or no English, and little understanding of the asylum system. For some, LDSG is their only source of contact with and information from the outside world.