AVID Information Session - Immigration Detention and The Role of Visitors

"Having a visitor in detention was a way for me to forget about the walls I was caged in."

The Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees (AVID) is setting up a new group to visit people detained in Lincolnshire and Nottingham.

This session is an opportunity to learn how you can be part of this project and it's development so that people in immigration detention are less isolated, can defend their rights and are connected to the local community. More than the act of visiting, visitors send a message to people in detention that they are not forgotten - and - nor is the harmful system that they find themselves trapped in.

We are inviting people from Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire to learn about:

• What is immigration detention? What is Swinderby Residential Short Term Holding Facility (RSTHF) and how does it operate? Why are people detained in prisons, including Morton Hall and Nottingham prison?

• Who is detained?

• What does visiting involve?

• Why does it matter?

• And how can you get involved?

No concrete commitment from you is needed to join this session. This is a first step to understanding more about detention and how you might get involved. If - after the session - you are interested to volunteer, AVID is committed to working with local community members to shape the group and their visiting support.

About AVID

AVID is a national network of visitor groups, representing over 300 volunteers, who visit people in immigration detention. Collectively, members of our network visit all eight Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs), Residential Short-Term Holding Facilities (RSTHF) and various prisons, and work in solidarity with more than 6000 people detained a year.

We exist to reduce the immediate suffering of people detained and work towards a future without detention. We do this by enabling the vital role of visitors to immigration detention - through 1:1 guidance, training and support - whilst facilitating collaboration amongst UK visitor groups.

About Immigration Detention

Immigration Detention is the practice of incarcerating individuals who are subject to immigration control. It is an administrative process, which means that decisions to detain individuals are not ordered by any court but instead made by the Home Office, without any automatic judicial oversight. The aim of immigration detention is to deport people from the UK. There is not a time limit for the length of detention in the UK and this has been described by people detained as “mental torture”.

Immigration detention operates across the UK, often in remote locations. In Lincolnshire, Swinderby RSTHF and Morton Hall prison (previously Morton Hall IRC) are part of this system. At Swinderby RSTHF, people can be detained for up to 7 days - this could be on arrival to the UK, having just been detained or shortly before deportation - leaving people frightened and confused. HMP Morton Hall is able to detain people indefinitely under immigration powers following the end of their custodial sentence.