19 h. ago UN backs plans to deport failed asylum seekers to 'return hubs' abroad as Labour considers sending migrants to the Balkans

Last month, Yvette Cooper discussed sending asylum seekers to 'return hubs' in Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia with the head of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Events

3 d. ago ‘We feel like we’re back in Senegal’: the Sufis helping migrants in the Canaries

Part-school, part-social network, a Mouride circle on the Spanish island is helping teenage asylum seekers prepare for adulthood and navigate a challenging welfare system• Photographs by Diana TakacsovaIn a three-storey building in a residential neighbourhood in Gran Canaria, about an hour’s drive from the airport, more than a dozen teenage Senegalese boys in colourful, flowing robes sit in a circle, soulfully chanting supplications. Behind them, girls sit with their heads covered, praying. On the top-floor terrace a feast of steaming rice, meat and vegetable gravy is being prepared.It is a bright Sunday afternoon in February. The young people are mostly asylum seekers from Senegal, who live in detention centres where conditions can be brutal, according to Spanish human rights groups. Continue reading...

Events

6 d. ago Gaza is a ‘killing field’ where people are being starved. How long will the world tolerate this? | Arwa Mahdawi

What is happening is, quite simply, annihilation. Yet our politicians keep funding it and media outlets normalize itWhere do I even start? In recent weeks I’ve sat down to try and write about Gaza and, every time I steel myself to write about one atrocity, another atrocity is committed. Palestinian journalists have been burned alive, babies have frozen to death, medics have been executed and buried in mass graves, kids are being killed in their sleep. Meanwhile, in the US and Germany, speaking out about dead Palestinian babies can land you on a deportation list. Arguing that international human rights law should be respected can put you at risk of being snatched off the street and stuck in a detention centre.I don’t know where to start and I don’t know what is really left to say at this point. After 18 months of endless carnage, it should be clear to everyone that this is not a war. That this is not self-defence. What is happening in Gaza is, quite simply, annihilation. A litany of ...

Events

2 w. ago I was a British tourist trying to leave America. Then I was detained, shackled and sent to an immigration detention centre

Graphic artist Rebecca Burke was on the trip of a lifetime. But as she tried to leave the US she was stopped, interrogated and branded an illegal alien by ICE. Now back home, she tells others thinking of going to Trump’s America: don’t do itJust before the graphic artist Rebecca Burke left Seattle to travel to Vancouver, Canada, on 26 February, she posted an image of a rough comic to Instagram. “One part of travelling that I love is seeing glimpses of other lives,” read the bubble in the first panel, above sketches of cosy homes: crossword puzzle books, house plants, a lit candle, a steaming kettle on a gas stove. Burke had seen plenty of glimpses of other lives over the six weeks she had been backpacking in the US. She had been travelling on her own, staying on homestays free of charge in exchange for doing household chores, drawing as she went. For Burke, 28, it was absolute freedom.Within hours of posting that drawing, Burke got to see a much darker side of life in America, and f...

Politics

2 w. ago P Diddy hit with five new criminal counts while still in jail awaiting trial

Rapper P Diddy is currently being held in the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn and has been charged with five new criminal counts while waiting for his trial in May

Events

2 w. ago Teacher 'sexually abused' child inmate and 'asked him to kill her husband'

Elena Bardin, 27, is accused of 'illegal sexual contact' with a young inmate at a juvenile detention centre where she worked as a teacher - and is also alleged to have asked him to kill her husband

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2 w. ago Palestinian doctors ‘tortured into confessions’ in harrowing claims of abuse against Israel’s soldiers

Dr Khaled Al-Serr, a surgeon at Al-Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, claims he was brutally beaten and other inmates told him they had been raped in Sde Teiman military detention centre, southern Israel. Chief International Correspondent Bel Trew reports

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2 w. ago ‘The way to hell’: Palestinian doctors accuse Israeli soldiers of abuse and torture

Dr Khaled Al-Serr, a surgeon at Al-Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, claims he was brutally beaten and other inmates told him they had been raped in Sde Teiman military detention centre, southern Israel. Chief International Correspondent Bel Trew reports

Events

2 w. ago The Western tourists locked up by US border guards: Travellers describe spending weeks in 'insane, psychological, social experiment' detention centres under Trump immigration crackdown

Canadian actress Jasmine Mooney described ICE detention as spending weeks in an 'insane psychological, social experiment'.

Politics

3 w. ago ‘Detention Alley’: inside the Ice centres in the US south where foreign students and undocumented migrants languish

Foreign nationals caught up in Trump’s immigration dragnet are transported sometimes thousands of miles away to an isolated network of lockups and courtsBehind the reinforced doors of courtroom number two, at a remote detention centre in central Louisiana, Lu Xianying sat alone before an immigration judge unable to communicate.Dressed in a blue jumpsuit that drooped from his slight frame, he waited as court staff called three different translation services, unable to find an interpreter proficient in his native Gan Chinese. Continue reading...

Events

4 w. ago UK Government could send migrants to Balkans and 'lock them up' in detention centres

Plans are being considered around whether or not to deport failed asylum seekers to the Balkans and 'lock them up' in ‘detention centres’ after ditching the Rwanda scheme

Politics

4 w. ago Labour considers plans to deport failed asylum seekers to the BALKANS and lock them in 'detention centres'

The asylum seekers could be sent to 'return hubs' in the western Balkans - in countries including Albania, Serbia, Bosnia and North Macedonia, after their applications for asylum are rejected.

Events

4 w. ago British Royal Navy sailor, 22, is jailed in Bahrain after 'stepping in to break up a fight'

Owen Haggerty, 22, was arrested on assault charges in Bahrain last month and was being held in a detention centre. He was convicted on Wednesday and jailed for three months.

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