Locked up for a piece of paper

Welcome to the first of our podcast series, Immigration Detention, The Hidden Costs, brought to you by the Unchained Collective, where we will be hearing conversations between those who have spent time indefinitely detained on administrative grounds in British Immigration Detention Centers. The aim is to raise critical awareness through the powerful voice of experience of the destructive impact of immigration detention on many levels, on individuals, families, communities and society at large. Discussions encompass the ongoing harms of being dehumanized and criminalized, the stigma and rejection individuals face upon release into the community, as well as the economic impacts of the system on individuals and society as a whole. However, these conversations importantly also demonstrate the strength and powerful resistance of those targeted by this system. A crucial question is raised - why is this system that destroys lives, wastes public funds and fosters division in our society allowed to continue? Can we envision alternative ways of being together in our shared vulnerability? Can we build a society where everyone has the right to breathe? Ultimately, these powerful accounts serve as a collective call to action. When future books chronicle the history of systematic incarceration and torture, sometimes resulting in death of predominantly non-white individuals for crossing borders, what role would you like to have played in that history? This is a question, this podcast series, compels you to ask yourself. All these women, all these people, they have passed through a lot of trauma before even coming to the UK, so kind of determining them is kind of re-traumatizing the main game. They would be walking up and down the corridors in the night, here they are boots, you know, thumping on the floor, you could in sleep because they would be taking people to deport them in the night. The whole idea of a detention system, but they didn't tell me why I was detained. It's based on past experience of colonialism. I still don't know why they detained me, no one wanted anything to do with me because they felt I might have committed a crime. I'm being labeled as a criminal, so I don't have any freedom. The web stage of money involved in running this whole institution and you just feel losing my identity, having to get a justice room, you know, being called out through a number. I feel like, I mean, just a number. You are unwanted, you feel like you are really not like a human being. Everybody's men and women, to be behind bars, is an economic waste, is a human waste. We need to counterbalance the negative rhetorics that come in out there that immigrants are nothing but a body and two society. And this hatred to hate other people who are not English, knowledge they say is power, ignorance is a very big disease. They want to silence us, it takes courage for us to be here, I refuse to let their system break me. I don't want to be a victim, rather I want to be a victim. Welcome to this podcast series, The Hidden Cost of Immigration Detention, brought to you by the Unchained Collective. In this episode, Aminata shares the anger she feels as the injustice of being locked up just for the sake of a piece of paper. She connects the UK's current immigration detention system to its history of colonialism and the desire to silence a particular group of people. She questions why the government pursues such costly detention policies. Aminata shares how important both good legal and strong family support was for her case and her own resilience was to release. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Well, I am originally from civilian, I did my first degree in accounting and finance, I had a two-year break, then I did my masters before eventually facing the real world. What's the real world with me? The real world of immigration. What happened? Well, what I meant by the real world of immigration is after studying, I tried to move from being a student to permanent residency. So because of that, what happened? So because of that, I was detained. In immigration detention center. So what do you say about that, what empaths do you think it has on you? For me, I'll say detention is a bad thing. I think it's wrong to lock people up for something that all they are asking for is a piece of paper that would allow them to adhere to the laws of the country. So to look at someone and just lock them up for a piece of paper, I feel it's ridiculous. It makes me angry, angry not because of my experience, my experience is one thing, but angry because of the double standards. The double standards that the UK seemed to be setting, very quick to denounce other countries, very quick to point things out at other people, but yet it's good for them to do the same thing or similar things that they're speaking against. So for me, that is my anger. So do you think that experience in the detention center, do you think it has a negative impact on your personal life or your family life? It doesn't have a negative impact on me. Reason being, I refuse to let their system break me. I refuse to be silent by the system, the system of oppression. So do you mean that the incident actually has a kind of silence in effect on you or they are trying to break you but you didn't allow it? The whole idea of a detention system, it's based on past experience of colonialism, past experience of silence in the week, and when I'm in the week here, not you as an individual or myself as an individual, for my background, coming from minority background, from an African being black, we're always seeing as the group to be oppressed on, the group to set examples on. So therefore, the regime, the system of detention for me is based on wanting to silence a particular group of people, so that is what I meant by being silenced. Okay, because of your maybe level of perseverance or things like that, you didn't get down to you but we had to observe any vulnerability with other people that we are detained because I'm sure other people would be detained alongside with you. Oh yes, I mean, there were people that were more vulnerable than I was. I mean, I had a little mate that attempted suicide, but obviously, thank God she was, she's fine now. There were people that were broken and still broken as I speak to you. They, some of them have had their status, they have updated. But the trauma still leaves on. Were you prepared for what to face in you when you are released? After being released, you don't really think about it at that point. All you want to do is to go home. It's when you get home, depending on the support mechanism. This will then determine how you become traumatized by the whole experience. By your experience? By my own experience. Yes, first few weeks I was angry. I was angry because of the lies that were made up for being detained. So if I was detained on the basis that, OK, you haven't got your papers, your illegal, which is one aspect of it, was just based on that aspect, then that's fine. But when you base the on lies in the sense that there was things going on about, you've been refusing to report for the past three months, we've sent letters to you, you've not responded and things like that. And you know they are based on lies that are being built up to make a case against you. It annoys you. OK, now based on the fact that you've gone, you've been detained. So after you were released, do they have any parts on your personal life or your family life? It didn't, it didn't, like I said, maybe it was based on my support mechanism, based on the fact that I had friends that were supportive, based on the fact that I was lucky enough to have people that were fighting for me. And I think based on the fact that the judge that released me from detention was able to see where I was coming from, was able to say things that uplifted me. So it was like, you go into court and you're winning a case and it's a case where you have a judge that is literally trashing your opponent in front of you. And all for the right reasons, not just because he wants to be supportive of you, but they were based on the facts that were in front of him. So where I was angry that the homophies had based so many lies against me, I was able in this case to present those evidence to show that the homophies were lying. Wow, that's amazing. You are so fortunate to have a judge like that. And because you have a very good supportive family members, so you don't really feel the pinch that you have been to detention. What about your accessibility to employment or education? Do you think it has any impact on those things? Coming out of detention, I was able to volunteer because for me, it created the platform to speak, to share my experience of being in detention. And now having my status for me, it's moved me slightly from my direction of career path that I was looking at, but it's opening up other career paths for me, and other educational paths for me because now I'm slowly looking at things like policies, how can I impact policies, being government policies, migration policies, and also, it could be the economic impact of detention in a sense. The web stage of money involved in this whole institution, in running this whole institution, and why is this institution so important to the government? Surely if it's creating that much loss for the government financially, they wouldn't pursue it. So why are they pursuing this aspect of immigration? Why is this so much of a big thing for them? Is it because it's a lucrative market? And what do you think that can be done going forward? What do you suggest that can make this immigration process a better one? I think we can do without immigration detention centers. They've done it during COVID, virtually almost, all detention centers were almost empty during COVID, but yet they had a way of tracking down people. They were calling people, they were checking on people, they were sending text messages, they were sending letters to people. So if that could be done during COVID, then means there's a way out, which is a much cheaper way than running detention centers. Well, I mean, it has been a very lovely day talking with you. It is a big pleasure to talk with you. But before we run the. do you have anything to say in general? Anything you want to say concerning this issue? And economically, it does impact family. We talk about the cost of paying lawyers and your whole immigration costing crisis. Why is your intention? Because then the lawyers will start explaining about how they can't represent you in court. So you need to pay for a barrister and you've been told you need to pay for an external psychologist to assess your mental health. So they're all those costs that are involved. And also the cost to you as well, for the amount of time you just sit in there waiting for the home office to get back to you on your case. And there's a cost involved as well because you're losing money because you could be easily be working. And then there's the aspect of cultural stigmatisation. It's natural that in African culture we want to be seen as strong. We want to be seen as as productive. So when things go wrong, there's almost a sieve. It's a bad omen. There's a sign of either you not being spiritual or maybe your forefathers have been cost. So there's just that unimaginable crazy way of seeing things. So that could push people away from you. Or sometimes people just think you're not smart enough to have secured yourself, your status in any way, shape or form. Which means again we come back to things like gendered violence where you have some women running away from their partners. Not waiting until they get their final papers and then there you've been seen as weak. There's not been strong enough to be patient to wait. So almost kind of like accepting that those violins are right to accept while you're waiting for your status. So it then becomes an embedded thing within the culture which I think is wrong. Very good. You don't very well. You're very clear. You're very eloquence. Thank you. And thank you for having me. I'd like to say keep up the good work because we need the media. We need people like you to help disseminate the information out there. We need to counter balance the negative rhetoric that coming out there that immigrants are nothing but a body into society. We need to talk more about the positive impact of migration. So what you're talking about is creating awareness. Exactly. So you are ready to go any level to create awareness about what immigration is. … and what detention is, the impact of detention and the rest. So, that's all we are doing here to create awareness. So, you are willing and ready to participate in any venture in feature about creating awareness. Yes. Because knowledge they say is power. It is indeed. Thank you so much. We just hope and say I have already come. This rest that brought me to say this, and raised will lead me always one.