The recent closure of the Oakington detention centre in Cambridgeshire provoked a mixed response from anti-detention campaigners. Since the death of Kenyan Eliud Nyenze at Oakington in April, the concrete and barbedwire fortress has been anything but an advert for the British immigration system. Nyenze’s inquest declared he died of problems caused by an irregular heartbeat, but allegations suggest that in spite of complaining of chest pain, he was denied access to a doctor.

However, whilst conditions inside Oakington may be unsavoury, closing the centre has meant that applications of those inside were fast-tracked, and quite possibly not dealt with properly. On 12th October, the dark side of UK immigration policy once again hit the headlines. Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum seeker, died on a British Airways flight to Luanda. Having lived in England for 14 years with his family, Jimmy died whilst being forcibly returned to his home country. Witnesses on his flight explain how he struggled for breath, as his head was pushed down by three members of the security agency responsible for his return. He was screaming, "I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe."

This kind of violent restraint has become a worryingly familiar part of the deportation process. I spoke to Mr S (whose name has been protected for his safety), a Libyan asylum seeker who underwent a similar experience: "I was woken in the night, they bound my hands and feet and carried me onto the aeroplane. I was bent down. I could hardly breathe. The handcuffs made my hands bleed."

Private security firm G4S is contracted by the Government to run detention centres and escort asylum seekers back to their home countries. The corporation is notoriously unscrupulous, with an extremely questionable ethical record.

G4S is hardly the ideal first point of contact considering that many of the detainees at Oakington suffered from horrific human rights abuses in their country of origin. I spoke to Mr F (whose name we have also withheld), who was detained there for six months in spite of the fact that his body bore the physical evidence of torture. In Sudan, he had been kept in an underground prison for seven months. For Mr F, conditions at Oakington triggered post-traumatic shock syndrome, which led to him being placed on suicide watch. His application was initially refused, and he was very nearly deported. Fortuitously, Cambridge MP Julian Huppert found out about his case, and stopped the plane at the airport. "I have been a bit lucky," Mr F admits, "but now I can only think of the other people in there." He was helped by Medical Justice, an NGO which supports cases such as that of Mr F by providing independent health advice. Medical Justice describe the role of private companies in the detention system as "outsourcing abuse".

Although centres like Oakington are intended as temporary stop-offs, those with pending applications can be detained for as long as three years. Each asylum seeker kept in detention costs the UK Government £68,000 annually. On first arriving in the UK, many are immediately criminalised because they have no hope of obtaining a passport from a regime from which they are fleeing, and so have been forced to travel on false documents. Farah, an Iranian woman now being supported by Cambridge Migrant Solidarity, escaped Iran after a fatwa was released, condemning her to be stoned to death. Arriving in England, she was sent to Holloway prison. This kind of arbitrary imprisonment only adds to the overcrowding of UK jails.

Even once an asylum seeker has begun the official process, genuine applications are frequently caught in a mire of bureaucracy. Detainees are entitled to just five hours of legal aid, an insufficient amount of time for such a complicated process. Farah was told she needed to produce the official copy of the fatwa against her. It is an offence punishable by death to remove the document from Iran, so she has been unable to procure the original. She is now released on bail, yet although she and her husband have a small baby, they neither have the right to work, nor are they entitled to any kind of social benefits. Her case continues.

In the UK in the past four years, 28 people are known or suspected to have committed suicide when told that their asylum application failed, and even those who want to return to their home country can often still be detained for months on end.

As victims of international bureaucracy, detainees are in limbo, isolated from friends and family, acquiring mental health problems, often highly educated yet unable to work, and costing our cut-ridden Government a vast sum of money. There has got to be a better alternative to a system which is expensive, inefficient and grossly unjust.