Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group

On Tuesday the government is set to deport 50 men to Jamaica on a mass charter flight. The second charter flight since the Windrush Scandal broke.
Many of the ‘foreign criminals’ that are due to be deported from the country are young men who have lived here since they were children. They have lived their whole lives in the UK and if deported will be torn from their families and the only life they’ve ever known.
Reshawn Davis has lived in the UK since the age of 10. He has a ...6 month old daughter with his wife of 5 years. He is being deported to Jamaica after spending 2 months in prison 10 years ago.
https://www.independent.co.uk/…/deporta tion-uk-jamaica-char…
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Are you based in Manchester? We're hosting an event at the People's History Museum on Thursday 9 April! The event is part of their year long programme exploring migration.
Award-winning author Monica Ali and @RefugeeTales co-editor David Herd will read extracts from the Refugee Tales books.
Running alongside our event there will be a Meet the Activists marketplace where you can meet people working locally to end immigration detention.
... Tickets are only £5! See more info and get yours here👇
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Tickets for Refugee Tales 2020 annual walk are on sale now!
This year the walk will be from Crawley to Winchester 4-8 July.
Tickets are available from £15. This year we’re reserving 25 full walk tickets for Birthday Ambassadors, who pledge to raise £250 via Just Giving!
... The walk is free for people with lived experience of detention. If you have previously been detained and would like to join the walk just email refugeetales@gdwg.org.uk 📩
Get your tickets here👉 https://bit.ly/30yMFDN
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Seriously ill people are being released from immigration detention without crucial medication as the Home Office insists on “rapid” discharge times, top doctors have warned.

We are looking for an Advocacy and Administration Support Officer to support people in Brook and Tinsley House IRC's, ensure the smooth running of our office and lead on the introduction of a new cloud based database.
If you are passionate about migrants rights and would like to come and work at our small but busy office in Crawley for 3 days a week, we would love to hear from you!
The closing date is this Friday 10th January. Please see more information and how to apply on the Charity Job website.

Happy New Year to all!
Thank you to everyone who supported us in 2019, whether it was through visiting, volunteering, attending events, buying a The Refugee Tales book or talking about our work.
This year marks 25 years since GDWG started visiting people in detention near Gatwick airport. We are so proud of what we have achieved together over the years.
... Please consider donating as a birthday gift to enable us to continue✨
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We are excited to be recruiting a new Advocacy and Administration Support Officer to join the GDWG team!
If you would like to work with us in Crawley for three days a week supporting people in detention, we’d love to hear from you.
The closing date for applications is 10 January. Get more information and see how to apply on our website.

Are you an experienced writer looking for a new volunteering opportunity?
The brilliant Freedom from Torture need a volunteer mentor to help run a creative writing workshop for torture survivors called Write to Life.
Find out more and how to apply on their website: http://bit.ly/2LOcB8f

For #Unlocked19 GDWG Director Anna Pincus has written an article about how and why we decided that our parliamentary advocacy will be, from now on, led by people with lived experience of immigration detention.
'Who gets to ‘imagine better’? – Breaking hierarchies and shifting power on our way to end indefinite immigration detention.'

Take a look at our #28for28 Refugee Tales advent calendar. We’ll be sharing a tale a week throughout December!🎄☃️
Please do watch and share to help up raise awareness of indefinite detention this festive period.
You can listen to Booker Prize 2019 winner, Bernardine Evaristo, reading The Social Worker’s Tale here👇

Important ruling from the Supreme Court today!
It has found that detention of people seeking asylum from 01/01/2014 to 15/03/2017 under Dublin III regulation solely for purpose of removal was unlawful. Thousands detained unlawfully may be entitled to compensation.

Simba has lived in the UK since he was a teenager, but was sent a bill for more than £93,000 after he suffered a stroke and spent two weeks in a coma.
This is the reality for many people as a result of policies which have introduced charging for migrants in the NHS.

We’ve just joined #easyfundraising. It’s a great site where you can raise money for our charity when you shop online. All you have to do is create a free account and choose to support Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group. Then 4,000 shops and sites (including all the BIG names like eBay, John Lewis and Partners, ASOS, Expedia, M&S, Just Eat and many more) will donate to us every time you use #easyfundraising to shop with them.
You can do your festive shopping and help out GDWG at the same time! Thanks so much for your support.

Our Christmas cards are on sale now! They are £4.50 for a pack of ten, available from our office in Crawley with payment by cheque or cash.
Please email anna@gdwg.org.uk to reserve packs heading the email ‘CARD ORDER’.
Thank you to our wonderful volunteers Rianna and John who designed the cards and had them printed for us.

Our amazing Advocacy and Support Volunteer, Ollie, is running the Brighton Half Marathon to raise funds for our work supporting people in detention.
Please share, give words of encouragement to Ollie and donate if you can!

Make sure to follow @DetentionForum on Twitter for #Unlocked19! This week they are focusing on the voices of people in Brook House and Tinsley House.
'While Brook House immigration detention centre has achieved a certain level of notoriety after an investigative BBC Panorama documentary hit the news in 2017, a nearby centre, Tinsley House, is hardly talked about. Mishka, one of the Detention Forum volunteers, spoke to people who know both centres as visitors, to find out what differences lie between them.'

Today it has been announced that there will finally be a public enquiry into the abuse of people detained at Brook House IRC, which was revealed in the Panorama documentary in 2017.
The final report is expected at the end of next year.

This is sadly an all too familiar narrative. We support many people who are in detention despite being found to be victims of trafficking.
‘‘Traumatised’ Vietnamese man detained in UK for two years despite evidence he was trafficking victim’