Anger as asylum girl sent south despite Scottish legal challenge

Academics and politicians have reacted with anger after a girl seeking asylum was detained in Dungavel and then moved to a detention centre in England, avoiding a judicial review started in Scotland.

Campaigners condemned the action as a breach of the Westminster government’s promise to end detention of children at the Dungavel detention centre in Lanarkshire and to respect due legal process in Scotland.

Rima Andmariam from Eritrea was, according to her baptism certificate, born on July 1, 1992, and as such should be treated as an unaccompanied minor. However, the Home Office contested her age, and after spending the past two-and-half months staying with a professor at Glasgow University, she was last week detained at Dungavel.

Despite putting in for judicial review on Friday, she was moved to Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire at the weekend and is due to be deported tomorrow.

Alison Phipps, Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at Glasgow University, said: “This case highlights all the difficulties with devolution. The judicial review went in on Friday and the papers would have been received on Monday, but they moved her to Yarl’s Wood over the weekend and it became obsolete.

“Her baptism certificate makes clear that she is 16 but the Home Office has contested this. She is an unaccompanied minor and should not be treated like this.”

Ms Phipps and her husband started taking in destitute asylum seekers almost two years ago.

“My background is in languages and inter-cultural connections,” she said. “Seeing the racism shown towards asylum seekers, I felt we needed to help through our own home lives. We have had some amazing people to stay with us.”

Rima fled Eritrea after becoming separated from her father, and crossed Sudan and Libya. From Libya she took a boat, which sank off Lampadusa, Italy, where she was rescued.

Rima arrived in Britain in March 2008 and was originally taken in by social services in Cardiff.

“She was deeply traumatised by her time in Italy,” added Ms Phipps. “She lived in a squat and lost a finger in an accident. There are things which happened there which she can not even verbalise.”

Last week the UK Borders Agency launched a scheme aimed at offering support to families with children as an alternative to sending them to Dungavel.

Two days later a four-year-old boy and his asylum seeker mother were targeted in Glasgow’s first dawn raid for almost a year.

The Scottish Government condemned the action as “a clear and disgraceful breach of Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy’s promise to end the detention of children”, adding that last week’s raid breached the UN Convention on the Rights of the Children.

In October, Mr Murphy announced that from early this year up to four families at a time would be housed in separate ex-council flats in Glasgow before they were sent back to their countries of origin.

Patrick Harvie MSP, said: “It is essential that asylum seekers are given a fair hearing, and that appears not to have happened in this case. Instead, a vulnerable and frightened young woman has been bundled off to Dungavel in preparation for deportation to a country that has an even poorer record than ours for its treatment of asylum seekers. That is just cruel, and utterly unacceptable.

“Rima should be released and allowed to stay somewhere more appropriate until her claim for asylum has been fully and fairly heard. Until that time, she should be able to continue to live with those that care for her, and to continue with her education, as is appropriate for a 16-year-old girl.”

Sandra White MSP, said: “The Home Office knew that we were working on a judicial review, which would have been fully in place by Monday, but then sneakily moved her out of Scotland at the weekend.

“Something has to be done to stop this.”

A UK Border Agency spokesperson said: “We do not detain unaccompanied minors expect in exceptional circumstances.

“In cases where there is a dispute about the age of claimed minors we refer to social services and take their advice.

“Where social services judge that a claimed minor is, in fact, an adult, the UK Border Agency will treat them as adults unless contrary evidence is produced.

“Under the Dublin Conventions the first EU state to receive an asylum application is responsible for deciding that application.”