This story is about my boyfriend Joey. I love him more than anything on earth. He was not born in the uk – but is entitled to do the EU settlement scheme. He has been in an immigration detention centre since early May. The home office are preventing him from applying to the scheme.
He has been locked up now for 24 days. They have issued him a deportation notice for the second time to Ghana on the 2nd June 2021. He has no family, home or bank account in Ghana. His family are here in the uk and in Italy.
The the home office know by sending him to Ghana he they are disconnecting him from his family and from me and they don’t care. They don’t even care that we have been trying for a baby. They are going ahead with anyway deporting him anyway.
They know by sending him to Ghana he will be homeless and destitute and they do not care. Even though he has the right to remain in the uk. He is essentially being exiled.
Since Joey has been in detention, his personality and energy has deteriorated, he has become suicidal.
He’s depressed, anxious and in a constant state of panic about going back to a country with nowhere to live. He’s so low in mood, he doesn’t sleep through the night and finds it hard to breathe when planes fly over the detention centre and it rattles everything in his cell.
He has lost maybe 10-15kg in 3 weeks. When I hug him, I can feel his ribs through his jumper. His shoulder blades are protruding. His collar bones are so visible. His face is slimmer and he has dark circles round his eyes. I raised the weight loss issue with the people wh0 run the detention centre he is in & they said they do not put preventive measure in place for him becoming malnourished & they had not been willing to track his weightloss. They would only intervene at a later stage w/a medical invention when they believe he is an unhealthy weight.
On asking Joey what he gets to eat from them, they do not feed the detainees meat everyday. The average dinner is one chicken thigh with rice, one chicken drum stick with rice – children’s portions.. they are starving people in their custody.
When I told the welfare team at the centre this isn’t enough calories for a 5’11 adult man with a fast metabolism, they told me Joey had to buy noodles from their commissary.
I asked what happens when detainees don’t have money to buy noodles & welfare didn’t have an answer for me.
In the meantime, Joey has had his phone taken from him by guards. His SIM card thrown in the bin and then magically it was found by an office who knew to look in the bin.
Joey has had guards come into his cell in the middle of the night whilst he’s on suicide watch & verbally abuse and taunt him to the point he’s so panicked he cannot verbalise his thoughts or feelings. He has been subject to inhumane treatment in brook house.
I am heart broken; not just because I have had Joey taken from me, but to see him being put through excruciating agony, seeing the home office destroying his character and will to live. I can’t sleep knowing he’s there. Not a day goes by that I am not reduced to floods of tears.
I haven’t slept in weeks & If the home office successfully deport the love of my life on Wednesday, I don’t know how I’ll be able to take on that level of heartbreak and devastation.
Osime and Joey both have the right to be here so if you see my story, please sign Osime’s petition. It takes two seconds: https://change.org/p/home-office-stop-the-deportation-of-vulnerable-autistic-man-osime-brown-2f671100-bd95-423c-a547-c8b04da2a75a…
Please see my twitter account for more details (@eternallyamour).
***Joey has now been released!***
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