Joint Statement on Forced Family Returns and Use of Force on Children Consultation
Four years on from the widespread national and community resistance that ended the Rwanda deportation plan, we call on all individuals and organisations to mobilise and resist the UK government’s so-called ‘family returns’ proposals and consultation.
These proposals would see children handcuffed and violently physically separated from their parents and family members; forced deportations of people seeking safety; enforced destitution and denial of meagre resources from groups already made destitute by state policy; and an effective abolition of the right to appeal - when access to justice is already unacceptably eroded and legal aid deserts abound.
The proposals constitute an assault on the UK’s already fragile justice system; further eroding fundamental rule of law principles and flouting protections for refugee and human rights put in place after the 1940s with the intention of preventing further crimes against humanity.
In a context where this government is seeking to largely abolish jury trials; using secretive counterterrorism powers to criminalise migrants, protesters and their lawyers; boasting publicly about mass deportations and raids; and has already made refugee status temporary through an immigration rule change – bypassing parliamentary scrutiny; we have clearly entered a period of dangerous state authoritarianism and a rapid slide towards fascism.
The proposals are inhumane and brutal. They violate the basic dignity of people, and we reject them entirely, alongside the racist and classist “Earned Settlement” proposals.
Violence against children
The government is proposing to allow immigration officers to use violence against children. This would include the use of handcuffs and restraint, and physically separating children from holding onto their parents. As this policy would apply only to children of migrant families, it creates two-tier treatment in which such force and violence is legally permissible against migrant children, but not others. This raises serious concerns about equal treatment, the safeguarding of children, and UK’s compliance with international obligations on the use of force and the best interests of the child.
Stripping away support
The government proposes to reduce and, in some cases, remove basic asylum support and rights, including for children and families, and to remove local authorities’ duty to provide children and care leavers with support. If implemented, this will plunge many already marginalised families into homelessness and further destitution. It will also increase the number of children separated from their families and taken into care as the duty to keep families together is watered down. This is cruel and inhumane.
People already face huge barriers in the existing asylum support system, which is designed to enact administrative and bureaucratic violence to further marginalise and deprive people. These proposals will only worsen the lives of members of our communities, and together we must stand against these proposed changes and the wider erosion of migrants rights in the UK. These proposed changes reflect a long-standing policy of using destitution as a tool to attempt to force compliance with degrading immigration policies. This strikes at the most basic principles of prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment, which is at the heart of the human rights and refugee protection frameworks which were born in the aftermath of the 1940s. The government also intends to strip away appeal rights away from people who are denied asylum support. This is an assault on justice and the rule of law.
A disingenuous consultation process
We are responding to these proposals with this statement. This is because the consultation questions appear to have been manipulatively designed to get specific answers from respondents that could be read as supporting the government’s plans. As with the previous earned settlement consultation, this latest consultation does not give appropriate space for full disagreement and instead consistently and incorrectly assumes a level of support for all of these proposals.
We call on all social and labour movement forces to unite and reject these government proposals and resist their implementation.