Well, We Haven’t Heard From The Open Borders Crowd In A While…

Jon Burnett (who we are told is a worker with ‘Medical Justice, which investigates medical negligence and mistreatment in immigration removal centres’) has a heart-felt plea in ‘CiF’ for children of refugees:

Roughly 1,000 children a year are locked up in Britain's detention estates without judicial oversight, and with no time limit. The majority are held in Yarl's Wood. Many of these children share a special bond in that they arrive at their new school having been snatched, along with their parents, in dawn raids.

The emotive language continues throughout the article.

As Medical Justice – an organisation facilitating the provision of independent medical and legal advice – has exposed, many have medical needs that go unmet.

Many people entitled to be in the UK have the same problems, Jon…

Others suffer developmental regression and revert to bed-wetting. Many lose weight and some children display signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and develop suicidal tendencies.

And none of that is related to the things they are allegedly fleeing from? It’s all of it caused by ‘internment’, and only caused by this?

Colour me sceptical…

The school at Yarl's Wood is probably the only one in the country where parents of pupils went on hunger strike this summer, in protest against the treatment of their children.

But they are responsible for bringing their children into the situation, aren’t they?

According to the contract director of Yarl's Wood, the new school has delivered a "transformational change to the daily lives of our children" and those invited to its opening were given an enthusiastic guided tour around the institution. It began with a euphemistic description of the rooms where families are held as "homes"; before attempting to mask the reality of what, in effect, is modern-day child internment behind a veneer of colourful, brightly painted pictures.

No points for the staff trying to make the best of a bad deal, then?

No mention was made of the secure walls topped, in parts, with razor wire. No mention was made of the CCTV cameras, microwave detection units, or other security measures normally reserved for prisons.

That’s because these children aren’t your typical pupil, and their parents are at-risk-of-flight refugees. If there wasn’t any precautions against flight, I’d be surprised…

But Jon can see horror in the simplest thing:

In one corner was a chilling series of children's hand prints, signed by child detainees, of whom it can be assumed some have since been deported to uncertainty, danger, and harm.

Or possibly not, their applications having been found to be groundless…

After the school opening, attendees were treated to a meal of "international foods" that, according to those detainees present, were nothing like that normally served.

They get gruel when the journalists leave, do they?

Next, they were made to perform for the benefit of their visitors.

‘Made to…’? Has Jon been reading a bit too much Dickens in anticipation of the festive season? When does Bill Sykes make an appearance?

A gospel choir going by the name of the Over-Comers performed Rivers of Babylon; a song about being in exile replete with the lyric "But the wicked carried us away in captivity".

The ‘wicked’ here, no doubt, to Jon, being the UK authorities. But it’s just as accurate a description of their parents, isn’t it?

In an unprecedented move, the Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Child Health, General Practitioners and Psychiatrists has issued a statement calling for the immediate end of child immigration detention on the basis that it is "shameful", "damaging", and "permanently harmful to children's health". This statement comes from clinical expertise, and the belief that children should be treated as children, rather than on the basis of their immigration status.

And what do they think should be done with these families while they are awaiting processing? Nothing?

Yes. It seems that’s exactly what they think should be done:

It is a view shared by Medical Justice, which witnesses harms to such an extent that we suggest the only rational solution is to end the practice of administrative detention.

Yet another attack on the concept of national boundaries, disguised as mawkish and misplaced humanitarian concern…