Over 80 foreign nationals detained in Irish prisons for immigration offences last year

More than 80 foreign nationals were detained for immigration offences in Irish prisons last year, according to data from the Irish Prison Service (IPS).

It said 84 men and women from across the globe spent time in Irish jails for “deportation/immigration warrant committals”, a 65 per cent decrease on the previous year when 245 people were detained for the same reasons.

Nineteen Eritreans, six Somalians, six Albanians, four Brazilians, four Moroccans, three Algerians and three Pakistanis were detained for immigration offences last year, according to IPS data released to The Irish Times under a Freedom of Information request.

Two people from Syria, Yemen, Iran, Nigeria, Libya, Ghana and Senegal respectively were detained during the time period, as were individuals from Georgia, Moldova, Bolivia, India, China, Israel, Canada, Vietnam and Mozambique.

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Three Europeans – from Austria, Denmark and Portugal – were also sent to jails for immigration offences last year. Ten of the 84 people detained were women.

The Irish Prison Service was unable to confirm whether all 84 were detained after being refused leave to land/permission to enter the State at an Irish port.

The number of people committed to prison for immigration issues increased in the years leading up to 2019, rising from 335 detentions in 2015 to 477 in 2019. Figures dropped by nearly 50 per cent to 245 committals in 2020 when many travel routes were closed for significant periods due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are currently no dedicated immigration-detention facilities in Ireland, with most men sent to Cloverhill Prison in west Dublin and women going to the Dóchas Centre on the Mountjoy campus in the city centre.

Bullying

The Irish Penal Reform Trust has described the practice of housing those refused entry to the State in prisons as "wholly unacceptable". The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) reported in 2020 that persons held in Irish prisons for immigration reasons were "subjected to abuse and bullying from prisoners".

“A prison is by definition not a suitable place in which to detain someone who is neither suspected nor convicted of a criminal offence,” said the CPT.

The Department of Justice on Sunday said that detaining a person refused entry was “only undertaken as a last resort” and that the State is obligated to return a person to their country of origin “as soon as is practicable”.

It said non-custodial measures, such as a requirement to report to a Garda station or a requirement to reside in a specified place, were widely used as alternatives to detention.

A spokesman said work has been completed on a new block at Cloverhill remand prison to house immigration detainees separately from people on remand. However, he said this block had been used as an isolation unit since the outbreak of Covid-19 and will be assessed again once the pandemic is over.

He said work was also underway to find a “longer-term sustainable solution” and did not provide an update on the four single person cells earmarked as immigration detention units at the Garda station at the Transaer building at Dublin Airport.