Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) says it each year it has to deal with deal with some 170 cases of families that are split up by UK immigration authorities.
Because the Home Office does not release statistics on the number of parents in immigration detention, however, the actual number is unknown.
UK laws require the children to stay with another parent when a guardian is detained, BID legal manager Nicholas Beales said.
However, he said there are instances that parents are suddenly taken away for unknown periods of time. This and the added threat of permanent removal to their home countries that are sometimes thousands of miles away, force the children into a “devastating” situation,
“You can’t overstate what kind of damage it does,” Beales said, noting that Children are frequently reported to experience panic attacks, bed wetting and altered behavior upon detention of their parents.
The revelation comes amid controversy in the US over…