What is immigration detention?
Immigration detention is a Government practice where people are locked up in detention centres while their immigration status is resolved.
Did you know?
- The UK is the only European country to have no time limit on detention. This means that women can be locked up for weeks, months, or even years, on end with no idea when they will be released. This has a huge detrimental impact on their mental health and wellbeing.
- People can be detained at any point during their asylum journey. For many of the women we support, who came to the UK seeking safety, detention is extremely harmful and retraumatising.
- The Government states that it holds people in immigration detention in order to deport them from the UK. Yet its own figures show that around 85-90% of women seeking asylum held in detention are released back into our communities, to continue with their cases with the support of their loved ones. So it is pointless.
Immigration detention serves no purpose, except to cause harm.
We’ve released several ground-breaking research reports on the devastating impact of detention on women’s mental health.
Our research found that:
One in five women we spoke to for our report Detained had tried to end their lives in detention.
Forty percent of the women interviewed for our report I Am Human had self-harmed in detention.
Our 2025 report, A Decade of Harm, found that 85% of women felt anxious or depressed, 85% felt less than human and 65% felt suicidal.
“I arrived in the UK after fleeing gender-based violence. I was detained in a prison-like removal centre. This is not a life and I have no real home. I just want to be free.”
“I am a different person now. My physical and mental health have been destroyed. I lost my period, I became stressed, I am traumatised. I am still suffering; I am still in pain. No one should go through what I went through in detention, it is hell.”
“I was scared to death the whole time. I couldn’t eat, drink or sleep. I thought my life was over. I was suicidal, I was self-harming. I just kept hitting my head over and over wanting it to end.”