Notes on interview w. Residents Against Racism activist in immediate run-up to the Deportation

international | racism & migration related issues | news report

Wednesday July 06, 2005 03:15

by eeeekkkkkk

The Residents Against Racism people knew that the deportation was imminent from early this afternonn. In the early afternoon they were part of an anti-deportation demonstration at the Garda National Immigration Bureau on Burgh Quay. Around 20 Nigerian men were picked up on Sunday night in Blanchardstown. Gardai conducted something of a trawl through pubs in the area as part of the process leading up to the deportation flight. People without ID were picked up in the pubs and their identities checked later.

More Nigerians were picked up yesterday evening from a hostel on the quays. Some people got wind of an imminent deportation and did not turn up in recent days to 'sign on' at the GNIB.

There were (earlier today at least) five Women in Mountjoy Women's Prison awaiting deportation. One was Tanya Dube. RAR activists because of longstanding connections with Tanya were able to visit her there earlier today. Three of the four other women are pregnant. One is lightly pregnant and two are 5-6 Months pregnant. Two of the women apart from Tanya spoke to a RAR activist by telephone later while the demonstration at the GNIB was taking place. One of the women told the RAR activist that she had found out her husband was in Cloverhill Prison awaiting deportation. A woman with children, according to contacts of RAR, was picked up in recent days in Cork. A woman was also picked up in Tralee according to their contacts.

Tanya Dube was transported from Galway to Dublin in the company of a number of african men. Similar pick ups by the Gardai may have taken place in other Irish towns. The RAR activists have no way of knowing as they can only get information from areas where they have contacts.

The RAR activists canot get information at the time of writing about any named person who will be on the flight early this morning. There is no Garda or immigration number that will supply this kind of information. Information on the flight and passengers is generally not released until the morning after a mass deportation. Generally these flights carry 32-36 deportees and there is usually a certain amount of confusion about passenger lists in the immediate aftermath. So people wait. They wait in hostels, houses, prisons and 'offices'. Any information they get is from friends, relatives and other contacts. The prisons will generally tell people who contact them whether or not a named person is there or 'has gone'.

Some are simply taken downstairs in the GNIB when they turn up for a sign in appointment, they are put in a van and driven to their hostel or home to collect their belongings and brought directly to a detention facility in the airport. This is what happened to ******** ********* earlier today. She is 21, an 'aged out minor', four months pregnant by an irish man and has two younger brothers and a mother who arrived here before June 2000 and who has worked here legally as a nurse ever since. Pretty much all aged out minors that RAR know of from African countries, including Angola, are recieving deportation orders at this time.

*******'s Mother was at work when she was detained while signing on at the GNIB. As ******* was being brought down through the swipe-card doors to the garage to get in a van to collect her belongings to go to the airport an RAR activist was contacting her Mother. Her Mother was in work at the time. By the time she got leave from work and got home ******* was gone.

******* was finally given her mobile phone to make a call to her mother at 11 o'clock this evening. She told her mother. 'The flight is leaving at one o'clock'.

******* had run in a panic into the women's toilet in the GNIB on being suddenly informed that she was going to be brought to pick up her belongings. A number of RAR activists were present at the GNIB at the time. They had been fearful for some time that ******* would imminently be picked up. ********, having been in the country for over five years, was in a state of denial even as she walked in to the GNIB today. Some of the activists went with her into the toilet. Five Gardai followed them and very quickly after ******* was allowed to call her boyfriend, dismissed all requests for one of the Women RAR members to be allowed to accompany the by now hysterical and upset ******* 'upstairs'.

RAR activists reported meeting a middle aged irishman outside today. His pregnant nigerian partner had been picked up. RAR activists regularly encounter lone individuals who have taken it upon themselves to try to offer some protecton to people who are in bad situations. Today the people they met also included a Protestant clergywoman trying to intervene in some way in the deportation of a parishoner and a community activist from Rialto trying to protect the interests of an aged out minor woman who was involved in some of the community activities he helped organise.

All of the people to be deported who were in some kind of contact with RAR have been here for significant periods which mostly exceed three years. Some have been here for six years. Some of those to be deported who arrived in Ireland before June 2000 have since been in constant employment. The only crime of some was no to have had an Irish citizen child over their long period here.

Despite McDowell's vague promises of compassion towards those with children in school for years here; all RAR contacts from Nigeria in that category seem to be receiving deportation orders now.

The Gardai also called to pick up a woman with four children in Galway in the last few days. She was six months pregnant and had been on the run since the runup to a mass deportation in March with her four children. RAR had managed in the meantime to get her back into the system. Only her medical records which she had with her convinced the Gardai that she was too pregnant to fly. Within a short period (months not years) of the birth of her fifth child she and they will be eligible for for a deportation order again.

**************************************************

RAR need help imho from speaking to them. They sounded down and exhausted thinking of people they knew sitting for hours in bare rooms for a flight back into the 'Africa' all our leaders and celebrities claim to be so dreadfully awfully concerned with. There is no oversight of the situations of all of these people and the decisions taken in the Department of Justice on their leave to remain.

Bigger players than the unresourced RAR need to begin demanding some kind of oversight. One in ten at least of the files which lead to the issuing of a deportation order should be independently and publically assessed. If there are privacy concerns then redact the names.

In the absence of any observable political will to ensure humanity is observed in the deportation system it is all too easy to be left with the overall impression that the churches, the broad left and the unions have washed their hands of these people and are basically giving the Minister for Justice free and easy space to run around shouting 'Bogus' repeatedly at Africans.

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Comments (12 of 12)

A vivid and heart-rending account

by Justin Morahan - Peace People

Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:16

Thanks to the poster of the above account.
Things have now come to such a pass as to be almost unbelievable. This always presages inactivity on behalf of the public.

It surpasses credulity and understanding that a 21 year old woman, pregnant for four months, who has spent 5 years in Ireland passes happily and trustingly by the only protectors she has who are protesting outside the door, walks into the Garda National Immigration Bureau to sign on and ends up hysterical in the toilet being followed there by five Gárdaí who then take her in a van to collect her belongings, later ship her to the airport. Result: another young pregnant mother out of the country by 1a.m. Wash hands. Pontius Pilate.
Other pregnant women in Mountjoy, mothers and fathers from Dublin to Tralee to Galway detained, people living in fear around the country.

All of this 600 years after the poet Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh wrote the compassionate poem

"Bean torrach fa tuar bhroide
Do bhí i bpriosúin pheannaide.."
(A pregnant woman - sign of sorrow --
Who was in a prison of suffering...)

Has all compassion completely drained out of the present Irish State?

The brave RaR have carried the candle of compassion on their own for far too long. They need our support desperately.
We need an Ombudsperson to assess every single decision of the present State to send people out of the country.

The State has lost all credibility.
Statoil rules in Mayo. The innocent are in our jails.
The immigrants who approach our shores for asylum or dignity or survival are turned away by an unthinking bureaucratic Minister and Cabinet who cannot foresee (apart altogether from questions of justice and compassion) the benefits that would accrue from welcoming foreign workers and foreign cultures into our, at present, sorry island.

Confirmed that the flight is gone with an RAR activist.

Wed Jul 06, 2005 12:58

More confirmation from Examiner

by eeekkkkk

Wed Jul 06, 2005 13:35

At least 40 Nigerians deported on special charter flight :: latest
Gardaí have reportedly deported at least 40 Nigerians on a specially chartered flight that departed from Dublin Airport under cover of darkness last night.
Reports this morning said most of those flown to Lagos were arrested in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Athlone over the past few days.
The campaign group Residents Against Racism said it believed at least two pregnant women were among those returned to their home country.

Irish Times Report on Deportation. (More Pregnant Women)

by www.ireland.com

Wed Jul 06, 2005 13:50

Asylum-seekers held for deportation
Paul Cullen

Garda immigration officers have rounded up dozens of failed asylum-seekers for a mass deportation which was expected to take place last night.

At least 16 people had been detained in Cloverhill Prison yesterday afternoon in readiness for a deportation flight to Nigeria, a spokesman from the Garda press office confirmed.

A number of women were detained in Mountjoy Prison while other Nigerians were picked up in towns and cities around the country and moved to Dublin during the day.

Anti-deportation activists said Garda officers later brought many of those detained to their places of residence to pick up belongings before being transported to Dublin airport.

They said at least four pregnant women were among those detained and that in some cases their pregnancies were too far advanced to be allowed fly.

Leonard Cree, from Drogheda, told The Irish Times his pregnant partner, Christiana Araboro, was detained yesterday when she presented herself at the offices of the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) in Dublin. Gardaí then brought Ms Araboro to Drogheda to pack before being deported.

Mr Cree said he telephoned a number of people, including her solicitor, and raced up to Drogheda, arriving before the gardaí. While she was packing, gardaí received a call telling them that Ms Araboro was not being deported.

Mr Cree said he was delighted at the turn in events. Ms Araboro, whose baby is due in November, has been told to sign on at the GNIB in September.

Rosanna Flynn of Residents against Racism said immigration authorities had been detaining people over recent weeks. Others were detained yesterday when they signed on.

She said gardaí had picked up a number of Nigerian asylum-seekers in Blanchardstown on Monday. Other reports of arrests came from Galway, Kerry and Cork.

"There are people taken in for deportation who have been here for up to five years. They have integrated well into the communities and now they have been ripped out from those communities to be deported," Ms Flynn said.

"Deporting pregnant women is not a good policy by any standard. To deport women pregnant with Irish children is like theft from their fathers. This Government is denying those fathers a chance to be part of their children's lives in their own countries."

There was an urgent need for the asylum process to be removed from the hands of the Department of Justice into the hands of a body such as the Human Rights Commission, she said.

One of the women reportedly in Mountjoy is Tanya Dube, a South African woman who was the subject of controversy in 2002. On that occasion, she was imprisoned in Mountjoy while heavily pregnant. She was released to give birth, but her child died after two days, according to Residents against Racism.

Re the "mass deportation"

by Kian

Wed Jul 06, 2005 20:20

There was no mass deportation, this is pure sensationalism. Removing 40 or so failed asylum seekers once in a blue moon is nothing compared to the 100 + who arrive here every week. Granted, not all are bogus,but the vast majority are proved to be so. Those who are genuine should be given refuge in this state, those who are bogus should be deported as soon as can be arranged.

A decent deportation should be by the jumbo load.

30-50 people IS a mass of people.

by eeekkkk

Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:00

If 30 people were killed in say london - it would be called a mass murder - right?

eeekkkk

by PseudoNom

Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:08

If you are happy calling the influx a repeeated mass invasion, you might have a point.

Anything to stir up anti immigrant feeling PseudoNom

Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:12

Go dance on some other grave.

Thu Jul 07, 2005 16:20

I aint the one using a terrorist murder to make a bizzare point dear.

It was no mass deportation

Thu Jul 07, 2005 18:37

I cannot accept your silly argument eeek, comparing the deportation of 40 + bogus asylum seekers to an atrocity in London is absolutely ridiculous.

What happened here was a routine deportation of bogus asylum seekers, what happened in London was the actions of crazed Al-Qaeda militants.

Bullshit about my comparisons

Thu Jul 07, 2005 18:53

I am not comparing anything to anything. I was pointing up and defending the use of the word 'mass' and it's applicability when 30-40 people are involved in something.

High Court rules refugee decisions 'unfair'

by eeekkkkkk

Thu Jul 07, 2005 18:54

High Court rules refugee decisions 'unfair'
From:ireland.com
Thursday, 7th July, 2005

The High Court has ruled that the constitutional rights of asylum seekers have been breached by the failure of the Refugee Appeals Tribunal (RAT) to grant their lawyers access to its previous decisions.

Mr Justice John McMenamim said the fact the tribunal does not publish its decisions "is unique in the common law jurisdictions".

He believed such a position "cannot accord with the principles of natural and constitutional justice, fairness of procedure or equality of arms having regard to the importance and significance of the issues to the applicants which fall to be determined in this quasi judicial process".

In an important judgment with implications for the future working of the RAT, the judge upheld challenges by eight applicants, including five children, to RAT's refusal to allow them access to previous decisions of the tribunal to assist them when making their claims for refugee status.

The challenges were brought by a Bulgarian national, who said he fled Bulgaria after suffering persecution and harassment as a result of a homosexual relationship he was involved in; a native of Cameroon who claimed she was raped within a forced marriage entered into when she was 15; and a Nigerian widow and her five children.

The action was against the RAT, its chairman, and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform.

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Notes on interview w. Residents Against Racism activist in immediate run-up to the Deportation

Comments (12 of 12)