I'm glad she's won compensation but horrified at what this family endured. Think it bears cutting and pasting for anyone who doesn't have time to read the link:
"Quiroga applied for asylum as soon as she arrived in Britain in 2002, but after her initial claim and appeal were refused, the latter without her knowledge, the family were forced from their beds on the morning of 21 October 2004 by police and security guards, given an hour to pack and then bundled in a police van and taken without explanation to Oakington, which at the time Quiroga thought was a prison.
"The family's solicitors, Bhatt Murphy, argued that they had suffered verbal abuse and threats from detention centre staff, were denied access to medicines and appropriate children's food and, during two unsuccessful attempts to deport them by plane, were threatened with violence.
"On one occasion Quiroga was struck by a contracted security guard when she failed to maintain eye contact, as the children looked on. They were freed on bail in December 2004, 28 days after a judicial review of the appeal decision had been launched, and awarded British nationality four years later.
"Quiroga sought psychiatric help after seeing her youngest daughter strip-searching and abusing her dolls, imitating the behaviour she witnessed at Oakington."
Good grief, and we call ourselves a civilised society?
Bet similar treatment is still being meted out today. The Borders Agency were remarkably unbothered when I, amongst other MNers, got my MP to take up the case of a very young baby denied formula milk for a whole weekend. Neither agency nor home office gave a toss - they actually argued this was fine ? and in fact their response to my MP contained several obvious lies. They only conceded that this might have been wrong when I pointed this out to my MP.
I suspect the Borders Agency goes for easy targets to bump their stats up. Not the murderers and other violent criminals who should be removed, but decent families.