The Home Office have terrorised a family seemingly to prove a point. A mother and son were dawn-raided in Sighthill this morning, and now remain locked up in Dungavel Detention Centre.
There was a protest Friday morning outside the Home Office (Brand St.).
Urgent Action Appeal for Fatou & Arouna
In a shocking move the Home Office Enforcement Team at Brand Street have carried out an unexpected dawn raid on a young mother from the Ivory Coast who had been living in Sighthill.
The dawn raid, the first to be carried out in Glasgow for almost a year, was carried out only days after the Home Office announced the start of a pilot project designed to prevent the need to detain asylum seeking families at all.
Fatou Felicite Gaye, a 38 year old single mum who has lived in Scotland since 2005, was woken up by immigration officials early this morning. She was detained with her four year old son, Arouna, who was born in Scotland, and the pair are now in Dungavel facing forced removal from the country on Monday 18 May.
Arouna will be the 21st child detained in Dungavel since the beginning of the year that Unity has found out about. It is not the first time the four year old or his mother have been treated in this way. Fatou, who receives counselling from the Medical Foundation for Victims of Torture due to the trauma she experienced in her country of origin, was previously dawn raided in June last year and managed to successfully stop Home Office attempts to forcibly remove her then.
Only on Tuesday this week Fatou had been to report at the Home Office and campaigners at Unity are wondering why on earth the Home Office decided to use such heavy-handed and unnecessary tactics to detain Fatou this morning.
As a single mum with a young son Fatou is low on the list of people who are expected to abscond. She would however be high on the list of people who would have benefited from taking part in the Alternatives to Detention project launched this week. When the start of the project was announced on Tuesday, Phil Taylor, regional director of the UKBA, was quoted in The Times newspaper asserting that dawn raids were only used when "all other avenues were exhausted" and that "We only detain families as a last resort".
Clearly Mr Taylor cannot be believed and seems to feel that young women and small children should be traumatised early in the morning to show how exactly how 'robust' he and his colleagues are.
Perhaps the Glasgow Immigration Enforcement Team were upset about being told to put away their shackles, battering rams and other door-smashing implements for the foreseeable future.
UNITY are calling for a protest outside the Home Office from 10.00am tomorrow. Please circulate this call out as far and as widely as possible.
How to get there:
The protest will be outside the Home Office reporting centre on Brand Street, in Govan, Glasgow. The nearest underground station is Cessnock.
Please help Fatou Felicite Gaye and her son Arouna
Update
More shocking information has surfaced about Fatou's detention in a dawn raid this morning. Serious questions need to be asked about why the Home Office decided to 'dawn raid' Fatou and her young son this morning in the light of this new information.
First: Why was Fatou detained at all?
Fatou's lawyer submitted a fresh claim to the Home Office on Fatou's behalf in Febnuary this year. Fatou and her lawyer were unaware that a decision had been made to refuse this fresh claim until AFTER she was detained by immigration officials forcing their way into her flat at 6.00am this morning.
This totally contradicts any assertion by Phil Taylor that the Home Office use dawn raids only as a last resort. Fatou didn't know she had been refused so had no reason at all to fail to report at the Home Office. We repeat what we said in a previous message. Only on Tuesday this week Fatou had been to report at the Home Office and campaigners at Unity are wondering why on earth the Home Office decided to use such heavy-handed and unnecessary tactics as a dawn raid to detain Fatou this morning.
As a single mum with a young son Fatou is low on the list of people who are expected to abscond. She would however be high on the list of people who would have benefitted from taking part in the Alternatives to Detention project launched this week.
Secondly and possibly more importantly, why was Arouna subject to a traumatising dawn raid?
Fatous's fresh case was partially based on her son developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a consequence of his previous detention by the Home Office.(Fatou and her son had been previously detained for two days in 2007 and for two weeks in June 2008.) In support of this case, letters were submitted by The Royal Hospital for Sick Children; the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture; from a Dr Carruthers and from a Dr Bannuscher.
With such a case it is unbelievable that a four-year old child, that, with some medical evidence, the parent claims suffers from PTSD, as a result of previous detentions, was subject to a frightening and traumatic dawn raid followed by a third period of detention. Phil Taylor should be asked to justify how the go ahead could be given for such an action. If there is any chance that this child had been traumatised by detention in the past then this family should have been top of the list of families being put into the Alternatives to Detention project.
We urge you to contact your MP and MSPs to protest about the treatment of this young boy and his mum and to make these points about what has happened to Fatou today.
In particular please contact Fiona Hyslop MSP, the Scottish Education Secretary and ask her to raise it with Phil Taylor and the Home secretary as a matter of urgency.
Her contact details are: Fiona Hyslop MSP, The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, EH99 1SP. Telephone: 0131 348 5921 Fax: 0131 348 5708 Parliament Office E-mail: Fiona.Hyslop.msp@scottish.parliament.uk Constituency Office E-mail: mary.dickson@scottish.parliament.uk
We also note that in their 'refusal' letter, the Home Office appear to make something of the fact that it was the Unity Centre, not her GP, who referred Fatou to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture. The Home Office go on to note that no "evidenced outcome" came from this referral and think this is somehow relevant. We are not sure it is because as a volunteer agency we can only refer people to the Medical Foundation to access counselling services, not for the production of evidence. Surely the Home Office do know that only lawyers are allowed to apply to the Medical Foundation to prepare medical reports for use as legal evidence and that we can't? (Although we're flattered that the Home Office think we rate so highly...)
Incidentally this is the first time that we've seen Unity mentioned in a Home Office refusal letter. What possible relevance can it be that Unity referred Fatou for counselling?
Please support Fatou and Arouna. Many people know them, Fatou is a regular volunteer at St Rollox church in Springburn and is fully supported by her local church.