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Intelligence

A Collection of articles that refer to links between UK policies, Sheffield institutions, corporations and the European Border Regime. The aim of this collection is to produce a map of Sheffield that signifies internal invisible borders and extensions of the border regime within the city centre. Far from being a territorial category borders are increasingly regime of inclusion and exclusion, enclosures and rasist policies that take place and happen everywhere.

Articles

Angel Group: far from angelic

The UK government’s decision in 1999 to “disperse” asylum seekers around the country was a big business opportunity for the Angel Group. Along with a handful of other private companies, the Angel Group was contracted by the Home Office’s National Asylum Support Service (NASS) to provide housing for asylum seekers. This is what the Angel Group specialize in: they claim to provide “high quality accommodation and support services to vulnerable people”. By the end of 2003 it was a multi-million pound property industry with a director, Julia Davey, who is the 17th richest businesswoman in the UK.

However, internal company records, statements by former employees and the testimony of asylum seekers housed by Angel Group reveal that the company’s success is built on some dubious methods. Before the Angel Group was contracted by NASS it had already established its credentials as a ruthless profiteering organization. In April 2003 Ms Daley bought an old nurses’ home in Newcastle and called it Angel Heights. Its first occupants were Iraqi and Iranian asylum seekers who soon rioted over poor conditions. In its first 2 years Angel Heights generated a profit of £700,000 and Ms Daley awarded herself a dividend of £300,000.

With a five-year contract from NASS that amounted to £20m a year, the Angel Group started acquiring and renting properties across Yorkshire and the north-east. It was handling up to 800 properties at a time, all of which were paid for by NASS whether they were occupied or not. In the event, according to former employees, between 30% and 50% were not used.

At its busiest, the Angel Group was providing more than 3,600 bed spaces to NASS. The fee paid for each bed space was £102 a week. Angel Group properties in Sheffield, particularly Burngreave and Firth Park have been overcrowded, sometimes with 2 adults sharing a room with only a curtain separating them. An investigation by the Leeds Today newspaper uncovered “squalid conditions” and sometimes no gas or electricity in houses let by the Angel Group. A report by the National Audit Office in 2004 of asylum seeker housing provided by private companies (including the Angel Group) showed that 33% of 4,535 properties inspected had "significant" defects and 7% needed immediate action.

The Angel Group in Sheffield hit new depths in July 2004. An Iraqi Kurdish resident of one of its properties in Burngreave, Naseh Ghafor went on hunger strike to protest that his forced deportation to Iraq would lead to his death there. He was in the fourth week of his hunger strike when Angel Group representatives announced that they wanted him out of the house. His few clothes and vital official papers of his were taken without his knowledge by Angel Group employees in an attempt to force him out. At this stage Naseh could barely move his head, least of all move house.

The Angel Group is currently the subject of a Home Office investigation which began in August 2005. It has a Sheffield office under the name of “Angel Home Loans” at 57 Owler Lane, Firth Park. You can call its manager, Mr Bruce Cable on 261 7777. For some reason Mr Cable rarely leaves his office without a bodyguard.

by Sheffield No Borders 30.09.05 with thanks to Owen Bowcott and David Palliser of The Guardian newspaper

Army Recruitment Office

Join the army! Invade the country; create destruction, terror and a stream of refugees; persecute those who flee to your country; make money out of them; deport them back to the shit you’ve created. Then: start again. Sheffield’s Army Recruitment Office: 4th Floor, Central Building, 1a Church Street, Sheffield S1 2GJ Very close to Cutlers Hall………

by Sheffield No Borders 30.09.05

Sodexho Corporation

When the G8 Justice and Home affairs ministers were in town in June 2005, they were dining at Culters Hall, one of Sheffields most prominent venues. Not invited was as usual the public, enjoying a rice for dinner as it is for most of the world population in protest to the G8 politics at Devonshire Green. But guess who provided our honourable ministers with food on that night? It's sodexho prestige, the high end catering company in the family of sodexho corporation, a multinational running buisnesses in a variety of countries and fields. According to corporate watch sodexho's success is a product of the privatesation of public "services" including for that matter the "service" of detaining and catering prisoners and foreigners, whose only crime it is to live where the state doesn't want them to live. Sodexho built and runs the Harmondsworth Detention centre near Heathrow Airport and became famous running the voucher scheme for asylum-seekers during 2000-2001. This scheme was brought down by massive protest in 2001, but sodexho is still involved in similar schemes in Germany. In our visit to sodexho prestige at Culters Halls we will try to map out the connections of high end catering for the global ruling class and "taking care" of people who dare to subvert the nation state system with their autonomous movement. To have Sodexho Prestige running a major Sheffield venue like Cutlers Hall is a disgrace for this city not the least for their involvement in the war industries, crap school meals and their anti-union policies.

by Sheffield No Borders 24.08.2005

GSL Global Solutions Unlimited

Another nice one here: GSL is running four major detentions centres in the UK on behalf of the governement who is paying GSL well for their service. In Australia where GSL deals with the unwanted non-white immigrants, who are threatening the "white australia policy" put forward by the ruling conservative government, the detention company came up in the news recently. They were accused of mistreating detainees, not providing them with food and toilets and moving them around the country abitrarily. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone described this treatment as outrageous. "I'm outraged at the treatment of detainees or any human beings in this way," not mentioning of course that it was her governement who abolished all rights of refugges to get into Australia by installing dentention centres off shore and in poor neiboring countries. Finally GSL had to pay a 500.000 AU$ fine, but that wouldn't harm their buisness...don't worry. The policy of gated communities (inviting some intressting immigrants to fill gaps in the workforce and fencing off all the others, allowing a certain amount of illegal immigrants for the really really shitty jobs) is no australian special. The European Union and the UK are well on that way and GSL is helping them out. According to Corporate Watch GSL run detention centres in the UK in a fashion of failure, racism and misconduct. The BBC run an undercover report about GSL detention practises this march (2005), exposing widespread mistreatment, open rasism and violence by GSL staff against detainees. For the mal-treatment of detainees in Australia and Britain we demand that the home office and justice department stops working with GSL. We will visit GSL in Sheffield at the crown and magistates court, where they are making money with court-servises.

Sheffield No Borders 25.08.2005

Asylum Airlines

BRITAIN is to join four big EU states in joint charter flights to send home failed asylumseekers as part of the drive to increase the rate of removals >from the country. The aircraft, dubbed "Asylum Airways", will fly from capital to capital picking up illegal migrants in an initiative agreed at a meeting of the interior ministers of the five biggest EU states.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister, said after a G5 meeeting in Evian, France: "Our idea is simple. We think that foreigners with no right or entitlement to be in our countries should not stay. They are in breach of our laws.

"The solution is to send them home. So we have decided to combine our political and financial efforts and organise return flights for those foreigners whose residence papers are not in order. Together . . . we will organise airplanes to repatriate illegal immigrants from Britain, Spain, Germany, France and Italy."

Mr Sarkozy suggested that the flights could begin within a matter of weeks but the British Government adopted a more cautious approach on the timescale for the first asylum charter take-off.

The Home Office said that the Government supported the idea of shared EU asylum charter flights and was working out the practicalities.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said: "Between our five countries there is a real determination to demonstrate to our citizens that we can work together. Joint action is always more effective.

Focusing on the relationship between a third country and the five of us is the right way to operate to ensure that an understanding of obligations, rights and responsibilities is present."

He is pressing for the EU's biggest states to link the granting of visas to third country citizens to a willingness of that country to accept deported asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants.

The interior ministers said that countries that fail to provide travel documents allowing illegal immigrants and failed asylum-seekers to return home would receive fewer visas for their citizens to enter the EU.

Charter flights are a much cheaper alternative than flying failed asylum-seekers home on commercial flights. Shared asylum charters will help the Government to increase the rate at which failed asylum-seekers are removed after a 10 per cent fall in the first quarter of the year to 3,000 compared with 3,320 in the same period last year.

Ministers have set a new target of removing more failed asylum-seekers than the number of applicants whose claims are unfounded by the end of this year. The initiative will make it easier for the Government to remove people to countries with which it does not have strong links or direct flights, such as Somalia. Italy has stronger links with Somalia than Britain as does France with some North African states.

Aircraft have been chartered by the Government to fly failed asylum- seekers to the Balkans but have never been used to return illegals outside Europe.

In other cases failed asylum-seekers are deported on commercial flights, which is both expensive and can be disturbing for other passengers, particularly if the individual becomes abusive and needs to be restrained.

Estimates given to the House of Commons showed that, per head, the cost of removing an Albanian by charter aircraft is one tenth of the cost of using a scheduled flight.

By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

Private companies that run detention centres in the UK

23.Feb.05

by Bill MacKeith

As of January 2005 there were 2,644 places in centres dedicated to imprisoning immigration detainees. Seven out of 10 principal immigration detention centres in the UK are run by private companies for profit under contract to the Home Office (Interior Ministry).

The private company running the largest number of centres in the UK is GSL (Global Solutions Limited). They run Oakington near Cambridge, Yarl's Wood near Bedford, Tinsley near Gatwick airport in Sussex, and Campsfield in near Oxford. GSL was sold by Group4 Falck to venture capitalists Engelfield Capital and Electra Partners Europe in May 2004.

Premier Detention Services (PDS) runs two centres: Dungavel in Ayrshire, Scotland and Colnbrook, the UK's newest detention centre, built on category B prison lines next to Harmondsworth centre outside London's Heathrow airport; PDS also runs the small Queen's Building centre within London's Heathrow airport. PDS is owned by Serco.

UK Detention Services (UKDS) runs Harmondsworth detention centre, by London's Heahtrow airoport. UKDS is owned by Belgian firm Sodexho. Sodexho ran the UK's voucher system (as opposed to Cash assistance) for refugees, which was dropped after a year of protests. Sodexho used to be into detention/prisons in the USA until a boycott campaign in college canteens forced them to pull out of that activity. Sodexho runs canteens in the UK also. (House of Lords debates Monday 17th May 2004)

(The remaining main detention centres, Dover, Haslar (Gosport/Portsmouth) and Lindholme (Yorkshire) which use old former prison buildings, are run under "detention centre rules" by the Home Office and are staffed by government prison guards.)

Transport of immigration detainees for profit Wackenhut is a US private security/prisons company which in the UK runs the transport of detainees between places of detention, and between them and airports for deportation. The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (UK) published a report, Harm on Removal: Excessive Force against Failed Asylum Seekers, in October. The report documents 14 cases in which excessive force was used against asylum seekers during the process of forcible removal from the UK.

Sale of GSL by Group4 Falck The May 2004 sale by Danish company Group4 Falck of its detention prisons business GSL (Global Solutions Limited) - for £208 million to London-based venture capitalists Engelfield Capital and Electra Partners Europe - was a condition set by the European Union commissioner for competition for his approval of the £1.7 billion merger of Group4 Falck and another big "security business" company, Securicor. (Note: Only a few weeks earlier, the government said that Group4 Falck was negotiating the sale of GSL to "Bridgepoint Capital Ltd" - House of Lords debates Tuesday 4th May 2004)

Further background on Group4 Falck - Wackenhut - Securicor - GSL The Danish security company Group 4 Falck AS sold its controlling stake in Wackenhut Corrections Corp. back to the company for $132 million on Thursday.

Copenhagen-based Group 4 Falck, the world's second-biggest security company, acquired the 57 percent stake last year when it bought Wackenhut Corrections' parent, Wackenhut Corp. of Palm Beach, Fla., for $495 million.

Boca Raton, Fla.-based Wackenhut Corrections employs more than 11,000 people and operates some 60 correctional facilities in the United States, Britain, Australia and South Africa. Group 4 Falck spokesman Nels Petersen told The Associated Press the sale was part of the company's strategy of focusing on providing security services. "Our interest is in guarding and alarm services, not in running prisons and asylum centers," he said. Petersen said the proceeds of the sale would likely total $96 million after expenses and taxes and would be used to pay down debt. Shares of Group 4 Falck rose 5 percent to 122 kroner ($18.36) in trading on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Group 4 Falck employs more than 147,000 employees in 85 countries and has annual revenues of approximately $2.5 billion. (source: newsday)