MAMA STELLA'S STORY

Stella was legally British when she was taken into immigration detention for the first time.

Although she came to the UK from Nairobi, Stella was born and spent much of her childhood in Paris. 

“Sometimes when I don't want to engage with people, I plead the fifth and I say English is not my first language,” she smiles. “It’s not even my second! The first language I spoke was French and then I spoke Swahili before even learning English.”

Stella came to the UK in her early 20s, fleeing an abusive marriage. Determined to start anew, she set up a business in London, importing traditional Kenyan baskets, beads and sisal bags, known as kiondo. For a time, everything was good. But then Stella received horrifying news.

Her flatmate had been charged with supplying Class A drugs, and though she was not directly involved, the police believed she had known what was going on. She was sentenced to 7 years in prison.

“Before that, I always believed in the justice system,” she says. “But I was convicted despite not being involved. And that act went on to shape the rest of my life.”

As soon as she finished serving her sentence, Stella was deported back to Kenya and straight into the hands of her abusive husband.

During this time, she was subjected to extreme abuse and torture, leaving her with lifelong mental and physical scars.

Thanks to her French documentation, Stella ultimately escaped once again and returned to the UK, where she set about creating a home for herself. She was finally granted British citizenship after many years of living and working in England. 

But this milestone was only the beginning of Stella’s struggles with the UK immigration system.

“It all began when I applied for a British passport,” Stella explains.

“That is when my immigration nightmare started”.

Stella was sent to Yarl’s Wood — an immigration detention centre in Bedfordshire that specialises in detaining women, children and families. It is one of seven such centres in the UK, housing a portion of the ~20,000 people who are taken to immigration detention every year.

"It was a very difficult time,” Stella recalls of her captivity in Yarl’s Wood. “Nobody prepares you for detention. It was so bad."

“We were subjected to very cruel comments from the guards. They have this mentality of: ‘you are detained, you must have done something wrong. That is why you're here, and so I can treat you however I want.’

“You'd hear things like: ‘Oh, where are we removing you to? Where are we deporting you to’. Such comments were meant to ignite a reaction.”

Stella’s experiences are horrifying, but not unique. An undercover Panorama investigation and the subsequent Brook House inquiry revealed widespread abuse in UK immigration detention facilities. 

“We were constantly surveilled,” Stella continues. “They detain you for a long time, but they do not want you to form any friendships. You are removed from family, you're removed from friends, you're removed from familiarity. 

“It is mental torture, and there is no scale that can measure it. There's no scale.”

This harsh reality stands in stark contrast to community-based alternatives to detention, which allow migrants and refugees to live within the community while their immigration cases are processed. 

Under this model, people have access to support services, such as legal aid or a dedicated case worker, and they have the right to work and access education while they await the outcome of their case.

Community placement is not only more humane and compassionate than detention, it is also far cheaper and more effective. 

For Stella, being held in immigration detention was one of the darkest points in her life. But she found comfort in helping the other women at Yarl’s Wood.

“When I was in detention, I found that there were ladies who, although they were educated, had no clue of how to write a legal letter or present their case.” 

Stella had experience as a legal secretary and her years of interacting with the Home Office had left her with an intricate understanding of UK immigration law.

“So I started helping people,” she explains. “Some of the ladies would treat me suspiciously thinking I was working for the immigration system. But others started coming to me to help them write legal letters. I had a single cell, and it was considered a legal surgery, and the women came to my surgery.”

“Sometimes, the girls would say: ‘We can't understand, if you're a British citizen, what are you doing here?’ And then some of them would say: ‘I think you were brought here for our sake’. 

“I’d find sort of a satisfaction in that, you know? Yes, okay, I was brought there so that I could help women fight for their rights and to be brought back to their families.”

During her time at Yarl’s Wood, Stella helped advocate for dozens of people and her assistance led to the release of several women, but it also attracted negative attention from the Home Office.

"They threatened to move me to a different detention centre because I was helping people to write letters,” she laughs incredulously. “They will come up with all sorts of things just to ensure that you're not helping people.”

Why does Stella believe the Home Office reacted so strongly to her advocating for other women in Yarl’s Wood?

“Because they know what they are doing is not right,” she responds. “They know that if people had an equal chance of proper legal representation or just somebody explaining their case for them, the outcome would be quite different from just a refusal and an ‘Okay, bye bye. Off you go’.

“So there were good times and bad times,” she reflects. 

“The times when I supported women to get released, it gave me a sense of belonging. Because even though I was fighting for my life, I did not just sit on my laurels. I helped other women.”