We went along to the Mother’s Day Solidarity Gathering at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre last Sunday. Really good to join our friends from Justice and Peace Scotland, Ayrshire Friends of Refugees, Global Justice Ayrshire and others in showing solidarity with the people locked up in “Scotland’s Shame”. Just the sight of all that barbed wire and the massive fences around Dungavel is enough to remind you how inhumane the UK immigration system is and how we desperately need change. At the very least, we need to ensure that there is some time limit to immigration detention and, ultimately, we should be moving away from detention altogether and working towards free movement.
It’s also important to remember that Immigration Removal Centres like Dungavel are just the sharp end of a much wider policy which aims to create a ‘hostile environment‘ for immigrants. Since Theresa May was Home Secretary back in 2012, this policy has been bringing border enforcement into every area of life, dividing communities and creating a pernicious undercurrent of fear and suspicion which can’t be good for any of us.
