Demo at WH Tours, coach company in Crawley that is part of the deportation machine.

Meet 11am at Crawley train station.

Full call out to follow.....

IMMIGRATION CENTRE PLANNING PERMISSION REFUSED

Last night Crawley Borough Council Development Control Committee rejected by 14 votes to 1 the planning application by Arora International Hotels Ltd. for permission to convert the 254 bed Mercure Hotel in Povey Cross Road, Crawley into an immigration detention centre.

Radio Interview (by Radio Free Brighton) with people from NoBorders Brighton about the planned conversion of the Gatwick Arora Hotel into an "Immigration Removel Centre" (25 January 2010)

* requires support for the free vorbis audio codec, you will need Firefox 3.5+ to listen to the interview.

On 7th December London NoBorders is calling for a protest outside Crawley Town Hall (The Boulevard, Crawley, West Sussex RH10 1UZ) to protest Arora International's plans to turn its four-star hotel at Gatwick, Mercure, into yet another immigration prison.

On that day Crawley Council will discuss the planning permission. People who want to raise questions in the Council Meeting can register beforehand.

Join the protest outside the town hall at 7pm!

The new immigration detention centre at Gatwick airport will not be opened until the spring, Corporate Watch has learned. The official opening had been scheduled for February this year but has been delayed for undisclosed reasons. The purpose-built high-security prison, named Brook House, is based on the 'successful' design of Colnbrook detention centre at Heathrow airport. The new detention centre will be run by Global Solution Ltd (GSL), which is now owned by G4S, and will hold up to 426 male and female detainees.

On Tuesday 27th November, renowned filmmaker Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes The Barley, Sweet Sixteen, Kes) is coming to Crawley to show and talk about his new
film "It's a Free World...". This film is a drama about a single mother and depicts the reality of living and working in the UK as a so-called illegal immigrant.

Ken will be joined in a post-film discussion by a former Tinsley House detainee and refused asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and an activist from the No Border network, which organised the protest camp near Crawley in September.

Tinsley House is an immigration detention centre for 135 people at Gatwick airport. It opened in 1996 and has 11,000 detainees going through it each year. A much larger detention centre, Brook House, is currently under construction nearby and is due to open next year.

Entry to the film and discussion is free-of-charge. All are welcome.

Time: 7pm

Venue: Tilgate Community Centre, Shackleton Rd , Crawley, RH10 5DF

Transport: From Crawley Bus Station, take bus 2 or 273 to Ashdown Shopping Centre