CAMPAIGNER Liz Peretz was ‘devastated’ when she learnt of the Home Office’s plans to reopen Campsfield House.

The Kidlington immigration detention centre closed its doors in 2018, following years of criticism and as part of a wider government push to reduce the number of people held in immigration detention.

When she heard last month that the Home Office planned to reopen Campsfield by 2023, Ms Peretz was in ‘floods of tears’.

Speaking to the Oxford Mail at a Bonn Square protest against the proposed reopening, she said: “It was a symbol of the opposite of hope. To hear it is apparently going to reopen is just devastating, because I know the sense of all those thousands of people’s misery inside. I visited people inside. I know how many lives have been destroyed and mangled for nothing.”

Oxford Mail:

She first got involved in the campaign to close Campsfield in 1994. “After [seeing the camp] it was a case of I couldn’t not be involved because I would have just worried if they can do that to them they can do it to the rest of us.

“It is such a travesty in a democracy proud of what it does to support peoples rights to be doing something like this.”

An estimated 60 to 80 people attended a protest in Bonn Square, central Oxford, on Saturday afternoon – calling on the Home Office to keep Campsfield shut.

Mark Goldring, director of Asylum Welcome, one of the organisations that set up the rally, said: “When Campsfield was closed it was part of a reduction of immigration detention because most asylum seekers don’t need to be detained, they need their cases to be heard promptly - and the delays [in that happening] are getting greater – and they need to be properly supported to build a life in the UK if their case is upheld.”

More than 80 per cent of asylum seekers had their claims for asylum in the UK upheld, he said. “So, those people who are crossing the Channel and then being treated like criminals when they arrive are much more likely than not to be held to have a legitimate claim.”

The charity was concerned that, if reopened, Campsfield would be used to hold asylum seekers before they were flown abroad for their asylum claim to be considered while they lived overseas, for example in Rwanda.

Oxford Mail:

Last month, justice minister Tom Pursglove said: “Those who have abused the immigration system, including foreign national criminals who have devasted the lives of their victims, should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them. This is what the British public rightly expects.

“Opening a new immigration removal centre, as part of the New Plan for Immigration, will help ensure there is sufficient detention capacity to safely accommodate individuals ahead of removal.”

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward