STAR is part of These Walls Must Fall – the movement working all over the UK to raise awareness of and end immigration detention.
What is These Walls Must Fall?
These Walls Must Fall is a growing network of groups, organisations, communities, and individuals demanding an end to immigration detention and reporting, as well as supporting those at risk.
What is immigration detention?
Over 22,000 people were locked up in immigration detention in the year to June 2026, not because they had committed a crime, but because of their immigration status. At the end of June 2026, 2,152 people were being held, the highest number since 2018. Detention centres are run like prisons, with guards, locked doors and barbed wire, and they cause serious harm to people’s mental and physical health. The UK has no time limit on immigration detention, so people are held without knowing if or when they will be released. More than half of the people who leave detention are not removed from the UK, which shows how unnecessary much of it is.
The Home Office can detain people even if they are here fleeing war, persecution, and torture, and even sometimes children, despite a 2010 Government promise to end this practice. The entire detention system appears to serve no real purpose. Many detainees are later released back into the communities from which they were taken.
What is immigration reporting?
Anyone who is waiting to hear whether they can remain in the UK can be required to ‘sign in’ regularly at an Immigration Reporting Centre. Every time they go, they risk being taken to a detention centre at random. The uncertainty and fear this creates can have severe psychological impacts. The appointments themselves can be traumatising or stressful. Reporting is often combined with the use of electronic tags and curfews, which add to its degrading effect.Â
Many people have to travel for hours, at their own expense, for what may be a two-minute appointment.
What are we calling for?
- An end to immigration detention – a wholly unnecessary, unjustifiable practice, and a shameful civil rights abuse that cannot be ignored.
- An end to immigration reporting – it amounts to the unfair, unjust and unnecessary harassment of migrants, and it has to stop.
Take action Â
If you are interested in getting involved in the These Walls Must Fall campaign with your STAR group, please contact the student network team.Â
Online resources:Â
- Action resources from These Walls Must Fall
- Go and tell three people you know about reporting and the impact it has on people’s lives. You can share these stories