The UK Home Office is accelerating its drive for “illegal” migrants and those refused asylum to return home voluntarily – a tactic publicised as more cost-effective and “humane” than forced returns. But how “voluntary” are these returns really? And how have NGOs become complicit in this strategy?
The UK is the only EU country with no time limit on immigration detention. Since being refused asylum, 19-year-old Aamir* from Afghanistan has been held at Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre, near Heathrow Airport, for eight months.
He has no idea when he’ll be released or deported.Without adequate access to legal or psychological support in detention, and no release date, Aamir is considering “voluntarily” returning to Afghanistan, a country where a prolonged conflict has worsened in the past year, displacing hundreds of thousands from their homes.
“I can’t sleep or eat. There is no one to talk to. I feel like I’m going crazy,” he told IRIN. “I don’t want to go back to Afghanistan – my whole family is dead there – but I am scared I’ll kill myself if I don’t leave this place soon.”
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when such tactics fail it looks to trusted organisations to “persuade” people to leave the UK voluntarily. As one senior manager noted in 2014: “It’s a matter of trust; they [NGOs such as Refugee Action] can have discussions with migrant groups that the Home Office can’t… realistically we know that there’s a concern about engaging directly with the government.
”One NGO benefiting from this strategy is Hibiscus Initiatives, a registered charity with “teams” based at the Yarl’s Wood, Colnbrook, and Harmondsworth detention centres. The charity runs an “International Resettlement” project – funded by the Home Office since 2012 – which provides “independent advice to detainees and practical assistance to make resettlement in their home country easier”.
Unlike Refugee Action, which was transparent about its financial relationship with the Home Office, Hibiscus Initiatives doesn’t list the Home Office as one of its funders on its website. However, its financial statements show that in the year ending March 2016, the Home Office paid the charity a total of £400,000, accounting for 68 percent of its “contract income”.
Kayla*, a Zimbabwean woman detained at Yarl’s Wood, recalled her experiences of the charity: “They said that if I don’t return voluntarily I will stay in detention… I don’t feel like they are supporting me; I think they are the same as the guards – they just want to please the Home Office.”
Another detainee, Mark*, talked to IRIN over the phone from Colnbrook detention centre about his encounters with Hibiscus Initiatives: “They kept talking to me about returning voluntarily, returning freely… But I am in detention, how would it be free? They didn’t listen to me when I said I want to fight my case, to stay with my kids here in the UK… All they do is tell me I would be better off leaving… It’s not advice; it feels like a command.”
EXCLUSIVE: UK “voluntary” returns – refugee coercion and NGO complicity
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