Following the LibDem party’s insistence that the Coalition government honour an election pledge to stop keeping children in immigration detention centres, the government has contracted Barnado’s, Britain’s largest children’s charity, to help run a new ‘family friendly’ ‘pre-departure accommodation facility’ in Pease Pottage, Sussex, near to Gatwick airport.
Despite the promises, the new facility will be a prison where asylum-seeking families with children will be detained by the UK Borders Agency pending deportation. Security at the facility will be carried out by G4 Securicor – the notorious firm involved in the attempted deportation and death of Jimmy Mubenga in October 2010. No Borders and other groups which campaign in solidarity with asylum seekers have begun a campaign against the continued detention of children and the complicity of Barnado’s.
For further details see: http://london.noborders.org.uk/node/481
