The detention of children in Yarl’s Wood immigration centre was unlawful, the High Court has ruled.
Mr Justice Wyn Williams ruled this week that two asylum-seeker families from Malaysia and Nigeria were detained unlawfully at the centre, in Suppiah & Ors, R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 2 (Admin).
In a judgment that was critical of the UK Border Agency’s approach, Williams J held that both the decision to detain and the failure to release at an earlier stage breached the claimants’ rights under Arts 5 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
He clarified that the detention of families with children should occur only in “exceptional circumstances”.
Both families were snatched in dawn raids and the children, aged between one and 11 years old, became sick with diarrhoea and vomiting.
Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, who represented the claimants, says: “These women have courageously fought on behalf of all those who have suffered unnecessary and damaging detention due to the ‘tick-box’ manner in which UKBA has been allowed, until now, to lock families up.”
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