Victims of racism
THE Home Office was yesterday accused of racism in its treatment of Windrush citizens by a grandfather who was wrongly detained as an illegal immigrant.
Anthony Bryan, who feared he would be deported to Jamaica despite living in the UK since arriving as a child in 1965, told a Parliamentary committee that his case would have been handled differently had he been white.
Mr Bryan, 60, and Paulette Wilson, 61, told of the ‘nightmare’ of being embroiled in the scandal. Mrs Wilson, a grandmother who came from Jamaica in 1968, was also wrongly locked up in an immigration centre and threatened with deportation.
Both gave moving accounts of their appalling treatment to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Mr Bryan was questioned whether he thought his treatment would have been different if he had been from Canada, New Zealand or Australia. Asked if he thought race was a ‘big’ factor in what happened, Mr Bryan said: ‘In the Home Office? Yes.’
His wife Janet McKay-Williams, who worked tirelessly to secure his release from detention, said it was ‘because of the colour of your skin’.
Mr Bryan, from north London, was held in a detention centre twice, for almost five weeks in 2017. He said his treatment had ‘broken’ him.
His trouble began when he applied for a passport to visit his ailing mother in Jamaica. He later lost his job after receiving a letter informing him he had no right to remain in the UK.
He said he told immigration officials who came to detain him at his home that he had lived in Britain for most of his life, adding: ‘But to them I was lying.’ He told the committee: ‘I thought I was going [to Jamaica]. I just gave up.’
Mr Bryan was released from detention in November last year.
Mrs Wilson, from Wolverhampton, had been looked after by her grandparents after arriving in Britain aged ten.
In October last year she was detained for a week before being released.
Mrs Wilson said: ‘The first thing I got was a letter saying I was an illegal immigrant. They were saying I don’t belong here.’
Mr Bryan and Mrs Wilson said it was difficult finding proof they had lived in the UK since the 1960s – although they told officials evidence such as National Insurance numbers would indicate their long-term residence.