“If I lie in bed and think about myself, Why?…Why is this happening? It is not my fault. If it was my fault, I would agree. But I just comply with every step they ask me to do. Sometimes I cry at night if I’m alone. Three and a half years is too much.”

We met in a park. It was March 2017. Originally from Guinea in West Africa, he had left home as a consequence of traumatic events many in the UK could not imagine nor would ever experience. He had a reason for leaving home, and he had a reason for believing the UK was the place where he could seek safety and start a new life. “I heard the UK has the best democracy in the world,” he said. Yet, after arriving, he was confronted with a reality that would push him to the closest he had ever been to a breaking point.

The UK opened its first immigration detention center in 1970 and rapidly expanded its system in the 1990s and 2000s. For years, detention was used to hold people before quickly deporting them. Now, many claim detention has turned into a routine practice of punishing asylum seekers for prolonged periods of time. The UK is the only country in Europe to detain people indefinitely, and its detention estate is one of the largest in Europe. Currently, the UK detains over 1,600 immigrants per day in seven Immigration Removal Centres (IRC), three Short Term Holding Facilities (STHF) and several prisons. A new detention center for women opened in November 2021. Old army barracks and hundreds of hotels house and hold asylum seekers and the Home Office announced the proposed reopening of two additional facilities. In 2022, over 20,000 people were detained in the UK and 78% were eventually released back into the community, leaving one to ask the same question I heard from many men and women in the UK over the past five years, Why?

For this one man from Guinea, detention was like a jungle, “…easy to get yourself into, but nearly impossible to find your way out of.” He had seen people try to commit suicide. Witnessed others struggle with serious mental health challenges as a result of detention. Watched men descend into unimaginable depths of desperation. “Detention is a mental torture,” he repeated several times.   

The lasting impact of detention was present with nearly every person I spoke with. I met and sat with people in parks, in cafes, in libraries, in train stations, in the lobby of a hotel and in a parked car. “My life is pending on fear,” one man said to me. Another man was so afraid the only photograph he was comfortable with was of his shadow cast on the side of a building.  All of these people had been released from detention, yet I could feel the presence and the fear of the Home Office hovering around, influencing their emotional and mental health and controlling most of the decisions and actions in their lives. 

The work for this chapter spans nearly 5 years and was created over multiple trips to the UK. Before the pandemic lockdown, more immigrants were being detained than ever before. COVID resulted in a significant reduction in the use of Britain’s detention estate and of people being detained. After pandemic restrictions were lifted, the UK actually expanded its system, and it didn’t take long for the number of people being detained to reach pre-pandemic levels.

At the time of meeting the man from Guinea, I was just starting the Seven Doors project and I did not have a title for the project. As we talked he described the anguish he continued to live with because of detention as well as his determination to keep moving forward in life. He was incredibly inspiring and his story echoed the experiences of so many others. Still, he made it very clear, the traumatizing experience of detention cannot be confined to the walls of the detention center. It stays and lives with people long after and it filters into families and entire communities.

“When they put me in detention,” he said, “I remember walking through only one door at the detention center. I was in detention for three and a half years.  When they let me out, I remember they walked me through SEVEN different DOORS, from my cell to the last door where they said, You are free. But how could I be free? I’m still not free.”

“Those seven doors said, You will not forget this. You will always feel like you are in detention.”

“It’s like you [Home Office] take a 95-yr-old man and you put him in a boxing ring with a 20-yr-old man. What do you expect? He’s going to get knocked out. Isn’t he? You put this burden on vulnerable people and you sit down somewhere and you just watch me and make fun. You already know what the answer is. It’s David vs. Goliath.

“You can release me. Why are you keeping me? You just watch me. You refrain from releasing me because you don’t believe. I’m a human being and you still make fun of me.  You are the one who kept me, who put me in there. You are the ones who the burden should be on, not me. What is your interest? Is your interest to give people a chance to legalize their stay or is your interest about victimizing people? Is that it?”

“I’ve always tried to be positive. I’ve always dreamt to show love to people and receive love back as a human being. But, most of those things they want to instigate in the minds of people is hatred. They couldn’t push me to that. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t push me towards feeling hatred for other people. But if you ask me, they pushed me to the extent that you start to question yourself, to question, What is humanity?”

36-yr-old man from West Africa. Detained for 18 months.

“It’s on a road that is not open to the public at the airport and you are behind a barbed wire fence that is three meters high. As I drive in, I mentally take a breath and say, All right, I’m going in. This is what you are going to do.”

“I’m driven partially by anger. I’m angry at the situation and that there are people who are being detained under similar circumstances that were detained 25 years ago. Does that mean with another 25 years, there are going to be people detained under the same system? A system that doesn’t work, costs a lot of money and really is quite useless? At the moment, most people who are detained in immigration detention are released.

“What was the point of holding them here? It makes no sense whatsoever! And holding people in detention is just so bad for them. Their mental health deteriorates so quickly.  You can watch someone’s mental health over weeks deteriorate. Each week, they’ve gone a step down. And you think, What are we doing to somebody if we are holding them like this and then after 6 months or whatever, we release them?  Who is it satisfying? Is it a political act? In many ways it’s vindictive. It’s harmful.

“I think one of the common things someone in detention says to me is, What can I do? Which is an illustration of how isolated they are from the outside world and also from help. I try to build a relationship with people by saying, What do you need that I can help with? I can’t get you out of here as much as I might wish to, but I can’t. What do you need that I can help with? Do you have enough clothing? Do you need underwear? Do you need something to put on your feet when you go to the shower? These are not big deals, but they are some of the indignities of life in detention. Why not try to help?

“I must admit there’s a relief to get out and go away from these places. I’m very conscious of the fact that I can get out and go away and I usually have a vocal rant in the car on the way home about why this place exists and why it continues to do what it does because you’ve seen someone crushed by it as you’ve talked with them over the last half an hour or so. You can’t understand why that’s necessary. That’s why I shout. It just seems so pointless.”

John, Volunteer Visitor, Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group

“The first time I visited someone in immigration detention, I was at a loss for words. And I think I still am in many ways. What do you say to somebody who’s in that situation? How can what you do help them? The only thing you can offer is some sort of hope. You can say, I can assure you, you will not always be here. I don’t know what is going to happen to you, but you won’t always be in this situation. While you are here, I want to see you and talk and listen.

“I think the isolation is deliberate and it’s very profound for many people in detention. They will have never experienced anything like that. Many of these people would have lived in this country for a long time. They have families here. And then suddenly, they are transported into this, this no peoples place. It’s outside of anybody’s understanding. They don’t know where they are. They know they are at an airport but they won’t understand where exactly they are. It’s dehumanizing and very very unsettling. 

“The people inside are going through difficult challenging situations and you can see their humanity being drained away. Their autonomy is being drained away week after week.

“You know they call these places, Removal Centers!”

Mary, Volunteer Visitor, Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group

“Our advice line is open from 10:00am to 12:00pm every Monday to Thursday. At 10:00am, the phones immediately start ringing and they ring continuously until 12:00pm.”

“A lot of people who call into the advice line are very vulnerable and even if they are not vulnerable themselves, they are in an incredibly difficult situation. The virtue of that, they come here to the UK and they are detained in immigration detention, it’s exacerbating their trauma and not allowing them to recover, so when they call us, most of them are very vulnerable.

“Working in this area can be difficult, precisely because you are in direct contact with them and their stories. A lot of the things they share are so heavy and you are the only one listening to them. There are some days when you just feel gutted by what you are listening to and frustrated in the inability to help because of the complexity and the hostility of the environment.

“I carry home a lot of my clients’ stories. It’s not easy to shut it all off. I find myself coming home and still thinking about what they have told me. I can see the resilience in them and it is quite inspiring. Sometimes it’s so inspiring. Other times it is grim and it makes you feel hopeless and completely lost without any faith in the humanity of the system. 

“I’d say we experience more defeats than victories. Defeat is so difficult to deal with and we feel the defeats in a very strong way.

“I feel like we have a double purpose. One thing we do is give people an opportunity to be listened to and to have a voice. Our clients often don’t have anyone to talk to. They call us and they want to be heard and to get an update about their cases and they feel heard through the advice line. They say, I know the advice line is always there for me.”

“I had a man call and tell me, I’m sorry I call every day, but I don’t have anyone to call. I know you guys are always there to answer my calls. He said, In my cell, there is a little bit of light that comes in, in that light I see you guys. If you don’t answer my phone calls, I’m in the dark. “

Ines, ‘Advice Line’ supervisor, Bail for Immigration Detainees

“It is a site of historic abuse. It’s generally hidden away from public view. It can’t be seen from the road. In a way, it hides a shameful secret both past and present.”

“There hasn’t been a history of refugees, asylum seekers or migrants being locked up in the northeast of England. It’s the first time we have this on our doorstep and we’re committed to our campaign until it’s shut down.

“This was one of the few times we have been able to get access beyond the front gate barriers and walk down to the centre itself. We decided to suspend our regular demonstrations but we were worried the women inside would feel abandoned, so the act we made was a somber and sober act of taking flowers to the women, to demonstrate our friendship and to pass them flowers at a moment of national mourning. 

“The place is a site of mourning itself. People died there. People were tortured there and I think the women who are there are in deep distress actually. Our action was contemplative, meditative, but it was also a bold action of resistance that reached out with love and solidarity. Taking the flowers to the women means they know they haven’t been forgotten about.” 

Julie, No To Hassockfield Campaign

“I had nothing in Kuwait. The government denied me rights and a future. So I had to leave. I left and came to the UK. I was in the UK for several years, and they refused all of my asylum claims. It became too much so I had to leave the UK. I bought a ticket, went to Heathrow and immigration detained me.

“My life was over. The judge asked me, Why did you use a fake passport? I said, Home Office tied my hands and threw me into the ocean. How am I going to swim?”

“If you are thirsty and I put a glass of water in front of you and say Don’t drink that! You sit thirsty in front of that glass of water for 3, 4, 5 days, you will drink it and what will happen? I said, I’m thirsty. I am thirsty to have a normal life. I ask you so many times to give me a drink but you don’t let me.”

“Everything leads to nowhere. There is no solution. I try to keep myself settled and clean. I’m trying to apply for work, but I’m not allowed. I want to do volunteer work, but I’m not allowed. I want to go to university in London, but I’m not allowed. I’ve tried to get a driver’s license, but I’m not allowed. I want to be a normal person. Is that too much to ask?

“When I came to the UK I had plans and dreams. Now look at me. I have nothing. It is like a spider web. I am trapped and any move I make, I get stuck even more. I get stuck in their web and there is no way out.”

Asylum seeker from Kuwait. Detained for over six months