PRESS RELEASE - Refugee Action Group

The Refugee Action Group has stepped up its campaign against the opening of the immigration detention centre in Larne as the Home Office UK Border Agency presses ahead with plans for the centre. The Larne Borough Council meets on Friday to make a final planning decision on the centre. This would be the first such centre in Northern Ireland, possibly housing 22 detainees at any one time. The Group notes that in 2008, the Council of Europe urged the UK government “to consider the possibility of drastically limiting migrants’ administrative detention”. Despite this and the considerable recent cuts to the Home Office budget, the UK Border Agency appears intent on the very costly exercise of building an immigrant detention facility in Larne.

Medsin KCL are organising a series of talks relating to global health and London NoBorders have been invited to talk on Thursday 24th February.

In this talk, we want to highlight some issues about health care and migration. With the UK maintaining one of the strictest detention system in Europe, the first part of the talk will deal with the health care situation of migrants in immigration detention. In the second part we want to talk about the issues around access to health care for asylum seekers in the UK in general.