Blockade to highlight forced removal of asylum seekers

ACTIVISTS were today staging a nationwide blockade of Border & Immigration Agency offices and depots to highlight the forced removal of asylum seekers they claim is "morally unacceptable".

Protesters said that they were obstructing gates and doorways at various locations across the UK in a bid to stop officials conducting dawn raids.

Ten regional migrant support groups started their action at 5.30am. Activists targeted offices in Glasgow, Portsmouth, Bristol, and Newcastle.

Vans that would normally be carrying out dawn raids would be prevented from leaving between 6am and 9am, a No Borders Network UK spokesman said.

The spokesman for the group said that in Glasgow, 15 people had locked themselves to gates.

"The blacked-out vans are part of the forced removal of asylum seekers and their families, who have been denied the right to stay in this country by an increasingly harsh legal system," the spokesman continued.

"Government policy targets the most visible and the most vulnerable amongst those migrants that it sees as being 'undesirable' and therefore fit for this form of 'administrative removal'."