HUMAN rights campaigners have staged a demonstration following the arrival of female detainees facing deportation at a controversial holding centre in the North East.
Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre, near Consett, the former Hassockfield Secure Training Centre, is now operational and opposition groups held another protest at the site on Sunday.
It is understood the first prisoners arrived this week and demonstrators said their chants of ‘Set Her Free’ will have been ‘loud enough for the women inside to hear that they have support from local people who want to see an end to detention at the site’.
Emma Pearson, one of the protest organisers, said some staff were blocked from entering the site as they arrived for work.
She said: “From the outset, this immigration prison has always been advertised as an excellent employment opportunity for locals.
“This area does need investment and job creation, but these jobs do not need to be founded on the inhumane incarceration of already vulnerable women.
“At no point did locals get asked what they wanted the site to be used for or what jobs they thought would be beneficial.”
The Home Office has said around 200 jobs are being created and the facility will be used to house around 80 women who have been unsuccessful in their applications to claim asylum.
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The facility has the support of North West Durham MP Richard Holden, but Durham County Council has said it opposes the use of the site for this purpose.
Hassockfield was build on the site of the former Medomsley Detention Centre where the widespread sexual and physical abuse of teenage boys was carried out during the 60s and 70s.
Ms Pearson said: “The fact that this is a prison for women is particularly concerning.”
Protestors at Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre on Sunday
Julie Ward from the No To Hassockfield campaign said: "The UK is out of step with international human rights norms regarding its treatment of asylum seekers.
"We are the only country in the 47-member state Council of Europe that practises indefinite detention whereby people seeking sanctuary are held for months if not years not knowing when their nightmare will end, if they will eventually be given leave to remain or whether they will taken in the middle of the night to be deported."
In November, two days before 27 people drowned in the English Channel, Home Secretary Priti Patel wrote a ministerial statement to parliament backing the scheme.
She said: “Detention plays a limited, but crucial role in maintaining effective immigration control and securing our borders.
"It is right that those with no right to remain in the UK are removed if they do not leave voluntarily.”
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