Larne House Immigration Detention Centre: A State System of Carceral Gender-Based Violence.
In October 2025, the Belfast Telegraph reported on a newly released report by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons (HMIP) on a visit to Larne House immigration detention centre in Northern Ireland. In addition to multiple and repeated serious safeguarding failings by the Home Office and Mitie staff, the HM Inspector of Prisons report cited the case of a Spanish woman in Larne House who had been held for five days before the Home Office realised she was detained in error. There was no lawful basis for her detention during which she suffered a rapid deterioration in mood and repeatedly indicated suicidal thoughts. This was the case that HMIP chose to report on, there were 1,875 women held in UK immigration detention centres during year ending June 2024, with around 65% of those women feeling suicidal during their incarceration. This is state mandated gender-based violence. It is abhorrent that Larne House continues to remain open despite multiple reports of dire conditions, including the routine detention of pregnant women and the failure to adequately separate male and female detainees.
Larne House is termed a Short Term Holding Facility (STHF). It is located within the compound of PSNI Larne and is part of the UK’s immigration detention estate. Detention Action refer to STHFs like Larne House as the ‘the darker, harsher, less regulated and more secretive corner of our immigration detention system’. From its inception in July 2011 until present, over 6000 people have been detained there. In the last year, the number of people detained in Larne House has increased by 30%, largely due to saturation immigration enforcement in the North. Under the terms of “administrative detention”, the Home Office pursues indefinite detention with documented violations of access to information on basic rights, legal representation, translation, safeguarding and gender-specific support.
Immigration detention can only be understood as an oppressive state instrument, designed to instil fear. There is no form of immigration detention that doesn’t cause harm. Women for Refugee Women found that the vast majority of women who are detained in immigration detention had been survivors of rape and other forms of gender-based violence.
A recent Freedom of Information request by Women for Refugee Women revealed that in the year ending June 2024, only 11% of detained asylum-seeking women were removed from the UK. The vast majority, 89% of women were released, their detention serving no purpose other than state inflicted trauma and cruelty. Larne House is a place of isolation, terror, fear, degradation and a monument to racist, xenophobic border violence. Community-based Alternatives to Detention (ATDs) exist, but the UK Government refuse to pilot them in the North. ATDs are defined as ‘any legislation, policy or practice, formal or informal, that ensures people are not detained for reasons relating to their migration status.’
In August 2023, a report was issued by the UN outlining the key findings of the two Home Office ATD pilots and benefits of ATD programmes. Specifically, the pilots demonstrated in no uncertain terms, supported by data, that the placement of people in community settings rather than immigration detention produced better outcomes in terms of wellbeing, support, engagement and their ability to pursue a person’s immigration case.
We demand an immediate end to border violence and state mandated carceral gender-based violence. We call for the immediate closure of Larne House and the implementation of bespoke community-based Alternatives to Detention for the North. It is on all of us to demand justice for those targeted by the state in a forever war against those who the UK could and should be offering protection to. Solidarity knows no borders.
End Deportations Belfast.
https://enddeportationsbelfast.wordpress.com/