The United Kingdom and the United States have traditionally held similar stances on immigration, and in recent years, these stances have grown harsher. With the election of Donald Trump in the United States and Brexit in the United Kingdom, citizens who value nationalism and tightened security against refugees and immigrants have made themselves known as right-wing ideologies spread across the two countries. This year, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency came under immense media scrutiny and international outrage for unsatisfactory conditions and treatment.
However, the United Kingdom did not deal with similar backlash or media coverage regarding their own detention centers. In an age of digital globalization, the Internet and social media become vital to quickly and efficiently spreading news across large distances. Today, according to the Pew Research Center, over two-thirds of Americans get their news online, and other countries follow these ever-rising numbers. Thus, it is now more vital than ever that media coverage be reflective, expansive, and inclusive.
While this can be said for the coverage of the ICE detention centers, where many news outlets reported on the wrongdoings of the agency, there has been by contrast a notable lack of coverage in mainstream media of the conditions of detention centers in the United Kingdom as well as the treatment of refugees and immigrants in these centers. However, as the countries have customarily held somewhat comparable values, especially regarding immigration, and are now are currently going through similar political tensions, it is necessary to compare detainment center conditions and policies of the two counties and see if the United Kingdom has problems like that of the United States that are being underreported by mainstream media, or if the United Kingdom has a better detainment system that the United States should look towards for guidance.
In 1864, the United States’ first federal immigration control office was established, but immigration regulation did not become the responsibility of the federal government until the later enactment of the Immigration Act of 1882. The passage of this act, in conjunction with other restrictive immigration measures such as the Chinese Exclusion Act being enforced at the time, set the climate that led to the opening of Ellis Island in 1892, the first site of immigrant detention in the United States. After Ellis Island closed in 1954, there was a decline in immigrant detention. However, in the 1970s there were large waves of Caribbean migration that refocused the country on detention.
The modern system of immigration detention that is in place today in the United States began in the 1980s. The Immigration and Naturalization Service agency systematically detained undocumented migrants from certain countries under President Ronal Reagan, and many new detention centers were opened in the United States as well as Puerto Rico in order to deal with the new waves. In 1985, the United States Supreme Course case Jean v. Nelson overturned a mandatory detention policy that discriminatorily and solely targeted Haitians. Once this occurred, the current system of detaining those of all nationalities came more saliently into practice.
A year later the Immigration Control and Reform Act was passed. This act (IRCA) solidified the enforcement of restrictions on immigration as a vital part of United States policy. According to a 2005 assessment, “Overall spending on enforcement activities has ballooned…from $1 billion to $4.9 billion between FY 1985 and 2002…Spending for detention and removal/intelligence activities multiplied most rapidly over this period, with an increase in appropriations of over 750 percent.” In 1996, the adoption of the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act increased the Responsibility who could be placed into mandatory detention, and as a result, the INS increased the available bed space of detention centers. By 2014, the United States Department of Homeland Security was mandated to make sure that there were 34,000 beds available on a daily basis for detention.
ICE detains immigrants in fifteen detention centers, shelters, and state and local jails. Many human rights organizations and news reports have criticized the management of ICE’s detention centers, and many reports were released that exposed numerous problems such as assault, unsanitary living spaces, deteriorating mental health, and mistreatment run rampant. One of the countless harrowing tales reported by the ACLU is that of inadequate medical care: “…a Haitian detainee in Florida. The detainee had an abscess on his neck and the detention center’s clinic observed his condition and instructed him to lie down. A physician, nurse, and jail sergeant held him down and without his consent “came at [him] with a knife” and sliced open the abscess. The detainee reported that no anesthesia was administered. A few weeks later his abscess was still continuing to expel pus, but after multiple requests for more medical care he gave up. He told the ACLU, “I think this was abuse. They treated me like an animal.
The United States has repeatedly been found to be in violation of several international human rights laws. According to the New York Times, ICE has reported 1,310 claims of sexual abuse against detainees between 2013 and 2017. However, many estimate the occurrence of abuse to be much higher. In addition, the inability of detention center workers to provide adequate mental health care has been exposed. One account describes a man who came to the border in the late 90s from Mexico. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, claustrophobia, and schizophrenia, this man was detained for seven months in Adelanto West in 2014. During detention, guards would put him in solitary confinement for “days at a time.” These instances are only some of thousands. The United States is currently undergoing a time of extreme scrutiny as detention centers and their often clandestine practices are now coming to light. In 1914, the Aliens Restriction Act made for the first time deportation and internment part of Britain’s response to external immigration.
It required all German and Austrian nationals to register with the police, restricted them from traveling to certain areas, and allowed for their detention when deemed necessary. In 1939, the Aliens Department set up internment stations across the United Kingdom to examine “enemy aliens.” After World War II, the need for such large detention facilities increased. Only a small number of aliens, typically criminals, were deported each year and thus could be held in police stations as they awaited deportation. The 1971 Immigration Act authorized the Home Office to use detention powers more indiscriminately, affecting Hungarians in 1956, Ugandan Asian expellees in 1972, and Vietnamese and Sri Lankan refugees in the 90s. Then, in 1999, an Immigration and Asylum Act formalized the existence of the detention centered, which in 2001 were formally renamed as “removal centers.” The United Kingdom holds one of Europe’s largest detention systems. In 2018, 26,541 individuals entered detention centers and 27,429 left detention, a number down from previous years.
While search engines and digital libraries were swift to pull up data about the conditions of centers in the United States, reports on the conditions of the detention centers in the United Kingdom were noticeably less readily available. Most frequently cited were reports on the poor mental health of detainees. A detainee interviewed by Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group said regarding mental health in the centers, “ There are people who are coming in new here, for a couple of days, and it’s fine. One week, two weeks, three weeks then you see that people start to go down. […] Then he says, ‘I’ve been here one month, two months, four months, ten months, and I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why they don’t deport me, I don’t know why they keep me here’. And I don’t know what you can say to that. Nothing. And those people, they get really stressed.” Reports of sexual abuse and delayed medical care also surrounded the United Kingdom’s detention centers. An unannounced visit to Yarl’s Wood Immigrant Removal Center by the HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) in 2015 revealed that “45 percent of women feel unsafe at the detention center… A study conducted by Women for Refugee Women found that 93 percent of women interviewed felt depressed in detention and more than half had considered committing suicide…More than 85 percent of the women interviewed by Women for Refugee Women also reported having been raped or tortured, with many describing sexual harassment at Yarl’s Wood as widespread.”
There are many similarities in the poor conditions reported in both the United States and the United Kingdom; however, media coverage is vastly divergent—Google Trends reveals a sharp uptick in searches for “immigration detention” in the United States in 2018, while in the United Kingdom, search numbers around this time stay stagnant. In the United States, as the media flocked to cover stories of mistreatment, mismanagement, and abuse, similar problems occurring in detention centers in the United Kingdom were starkly underreported on. The two main factors that could explain the differences in media coverage are societal relevance and political context In the United Kingdom, the number of detainees is going down. Today, there are over 27,000 people in detainment in the United Kingdom, down from an all-time high of 32,447 in 2015. Statistics from Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford show that just over one-fifth of immigration detainees are held for two months or more.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the average daily population of detained immigrants increased from 19,000 in 2001 to over 39,000 in 2017. It costs the United Kingdom, £86 ($97.16 USD) to detain one person per day. According to ICE’s FY 2018 budget, on average it costs $133.99 a day to detain one adult, but immigration groups estimate the number is nearer $200. The economic burden of detention often makes it a large point of media discussion in the United States, while the same is not true of the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, in the United States, there is a steady rise in the population of detained immigrants and refugees—the number of people placed in detention annually increased from some 85,000 people in 1995 to a record 477,523 during 2012. As these numbers rise, the problem becomes more and more prevalent and thus catches the interest of the fickle media. Additionally significant is the current political climate in the United States regarding immigration.
President Trump ran a campaign as a staunch advocate for border restriction and tighter immigration policies. His decisive views thrust the topic into the forefront, In April of 2018, Trump enacted a “zero tolerance” family separation policy. Under this policy, children were separated from their parents, families, and any other guardians. The adults were sent to detention centers while children were placed under the care of the United States. Department of Health and Human Services. Government officials estimate that the policy led to the separation of almost 3,000 children from their parents. As a result of this mass separation, the public took note and investigations of detention centers flooded the news. Reports of poor conditions at detainment centers sparked outrage, as well as accounts of the mental repercussions on children of the separation. Protests and rallies were held, and many politicians condemned the policy and the detention centers. This policy was reversed by executive order indefinitely in June of 2018, but this policy greatly angered many and thrust the subject firmly into the limelight. By contrast, the United Kingdom has not seen similar swells of ire towards these centers as they have not seen such staunch policies enacted at the current time. Thus, the centers’ conditions are not as relevant or of concern to the everyday citizen.
The United States and the United Kingdom both have very similar issues in their immigrant detention centers. However, despite these parallel concerns, the disparity in coverage of conditions in immigrant detention centers in the United Kingdom versus the United States is stark. This contrast can be attributed to differences in the severity of the issue between the two countries as well as the differences in political climates. These two issues are most likely not the only factors at play here, but they offer explanation and insight into where this gap stems from. The negative conditions of detention centers in the United Kingdom must be made more relevant in the daily news cycle in order to begin alleviation of the problem.
Works Cited
- Detention Watch Network. “Immigration Detention 101.” Detention Watch Network, 12 July 2018, www.detentionwatchnetwork.org/issues/detention-101.
- Global Detention Project. “Countries.” Global Detention Project | Mapping Immigration Detention around the World, www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/americas/united-states.
- Gottfried, Jeffrey. “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016.”
- Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project, 27 Dec. 2017, www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/.
- “Immigration Detention in the UK.” Migration Observatory, 2018, migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/immigration-detention-in-the-uk/.
