The medical staffs at any detention centre in England and Wales has certain responsibilities and duties towards the immigration detainees at their centre. In certain cases, medical officers and doctors working in immigration removal centres (IRCs) must contact the Home Office in regard to any concerns they have over the health of a detainee. These obligations are relevant and legal in situations where:

• The detainee is considering or performing self-harm and/or suicide.
• The detainee is a torture, trafficking, rape or other violation of human rights claim or gender-based crime.
• The detainee requires treatment for serious and severe mental disorders or mental illnesses.
• Or the detainee is having their mental or physical health and wellbeing actively harmed by being in detention.

The medical staffs at the detention centre are responsible for assessing a detainee’s health and wellbeing when a concern is raised. If the detainee’s welfare is at risk in detention, or if they have previously suffered traumatising abuse, then the medical staffs needs to send a full report to the Secretary of State immediately. They are also required to provide special attention and care to any detainee whose mental or physical condition requires it, with any special arrangements being made as necessary.

If you have been detained despite being applicable for one of the above categories, then you may need to take action. You might need a Rule 35 report, which demands that detention centre doctors report directly and immediately to the Home Office with information of any detainee whose health, either physical or mental, is likely to be harmed by continued and long detention. If this is the case for you, then your detention centre might be violating the immigration laws of England and Wales, and you should seek professional legal advice, assistance and legal aid in order to support your immigration case.

It is also worth remembering that if you have been refused bail within the last 28 days, then you won’t be able to seek another hearing at a tribunal. This is only possible in rare and extreme cases in which the bail applicant’s situation has changed significantly. If you want to do this, you’ll have to explain what you think has changed as part of your application.

If refused bail, you will receive a written statement from the Home Office detailing the precise reasons for the refusal. This can be very useful when moving forward with future bail applications.

If you are a successful bail applicant and have your case approved, you will be allowed to leave the immigration removal centre. In this instance, you will be considered ‘released on bail’. However, all successful bail applicants are given specific requirements they must meet while released on bail.

Some of the most common bail conditions are that you live at a specific address upon release, often with family members or personal supporters. You are also very likely to be required to report regularly to a police station or reporting station.

Successful bail applicants must always be aware that upon being granted bail and being released from immigration detention, there will always be bail conditions to take into consideration. All detainees granted bail will have at least one condition they need to obey upon release. This might include:

• Having to attend bail hearings or appointments.
• Being restricted when it comes to which bail address you can live at while on release.
• Needing to frequently meet and report to a chief immigration officer or other immigration law official.
• Having a restriction on the activities you can do while in the UK, including things such as work and studies.
• Being made to have an electronic monitoring tag fitted for the duration of time you are released on bail.
• Being required to obey any other particular bail conditions set by the immigration officials granting your release on bail.

There is a very good chance that either you or your Financial Condition Supporter may need to promise to pay money in the event that you break your bail conditions. This is known as a ‘financial condition’, and having a supporter can help improve a bail applicant’s chances of success. The conditions of your bail might change after you are officially granted bail.

It is also worth noting that there will almost certainly be consequences if you do not follow the terms of your bail. For example, you might:

• Be put back into detention.
• Be charged with criminal charges.
• Have your bail conditions changed and made stricter.
• Need to pay the amount agreed at your bail hearing – this might mean that your Financial Condition Supporter will have to pay on your behalf.

The Home Office has a specific policy aimed at preventing adults who are deemed to be at risk from either being held in immigration detention or, if detention is necessary, that they spend as little time as possible being detained. The Immigration Act 2016 sets out guidelines for ‘Adults at Risk in Immigration Detention’, which contains certain conditions and experiences that suggest which immigration detainees could be particularly vulnerable while being held in detention centres. In such cases, the Home Office may grant temporary release on a strict time limit and under certain bail conditions instead of holding the detainee further. Situations in which the Immigration Service may find a detainee to be unsuitable for detention includes:

• If the detainee suffers from a serious mental health condition, mental disorder or impairment. This can cover a wide range of mental illnesses, including psychiatric illnesses, severe learning disabilities and serious clinical depression. It largely depends on both the nature and severity of the detainee’s condition.
• If the detainee has been a victim of torture. In such cases it is not deemed as appropriate, responsible, or in the detainee’s best interests to keep someone who has suffered from torture in immigration detention.
• If the detainee is elderly, they are considered a vulnerable person under the Home Office’s adults at risk policy. This most often automatically applies to any immigration detainees over the age of 70.
• If the detainee is a pregnant woman. Whether facing deportation or not, a pregnant woman will be considered a vulnerable person and will likely not be held in immigration detention.
• If the detainee suffers from a serious physical health condition or illness. In such cases that somebody’s physical health needs cannot be sufficiently met while being held in an immigration detention centre, then the Immigration Service may view it as inappropriate to continue detaining them.
• If the detainee suffers from a serious and debilitating physical disability. This may cover people who require wheelchairs for mobility, people who suffer from cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, severe arthritis or other physical disabilities.
• If the detainee has previously been a victim of human trafficking and modern slavery. Immigration detainees who have been victims of human rights violations count as extreme cases under the immigration laws of England and Wales. Foreign nationals in this situation may be deemed unsuitable for immigration detention centres.
• If the detainee is a victim of sexual abuse or gender-based violence such as rape or genital mutilation. Immigration Services may consider it against such immigration detainees’ best interests to keep them detained.
• If the detainee suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder. Whether related to one of the above experiences or not, PTSD is a mental illness and under the immigration laws of England and Wales, it might be deemed that keeping a traumatised individual in a detention centre is inappropriate.
• If the detainee is a transsexual or intersex person, then the Immigration Service may consider them a vulnerable person.

It’s worth remembering that the general rule, people who fall under these categories are considered people who should not be detained ‘except under very exceptional circumstances’. Immigration detainees who fit these criteria will not necessarily be released under Immigration Powers. According to the Home Office and the current immigration system, it remains a case of administrative detention and administrative process where it is at the discretion of the Immigration Service as to what decision is made on whether a detainee is considered an ‘exceptional circumstance’.

Unfortunately, despite these guidelines, what is considered ‘very exceptional circumstances’ is not defined and, as such, there remain a lot of foreign nationals who fall under these categories and yet still spend lengthy periods facing indefinite detention. The Immigration Service is free to choose whether a detainee’s situation constitutes grounds for release or not, and they may dispute your claim.

It is very likely that you will need to provide the detention centre and relevant immigration officials with independent evidence of you falling into some of the above categories. For example, if you have previously been a victim of a human rights crime such as torture, human trafficking or have been a victim of sexual abuse and violence, then you may need to provide documentary evidence of this. In particular, if you have been detained as a result of an asylum claim to the Home Office, and being a victim of one of these crimes and falling into one of these categories is a key part of your claim, then being able to satisfy the burden of proof with the right evidence could be pivotal in both ending your period of detention as well as having your asylum claim granted.

Also, in addition to the above categories covering all adults falling under the Home Office’s At Risk policy, unaccompanied minors are supposed to never be detained for the sake of child protection. Only in exceptional and extreme cases should children be detained. It is also worth noting that in the case of asylum seekers and some deportation cases; the Home Office doesn’t have access to the identity documents of the detainees. As such, children and minors have sometimes been wrongly detained by the Immigration Services because they have been incorrectly identified as adults.