Home Office releases 300 from detention centres amid Covid-19 pandemic (The Guardian) (23 March 2020)

The Guardian reports on the unprecedented release following legal action arguing that the Home Office is failing to protect immigration detainees. Duncan Lewis Solicitors Immigration and Public Law departments were instructed to bring the legal action by Detention Action in what is thought to be the first legal action against the government relating to the coronavirus outbreak. The action was bought on behalf of all those who are particularly vulnerable due to age or underlying health conditions, as well as for all detainees to be tested along with the suspension of all new detentions. Public health expert Prof Richard Coker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine provided an expert report, commissioned by Duncan Lewis, in which he warns that prisons and detention centres provide ideal incubation conditions for the rapid spread of the coronavirus, and that about 60% of those in detention could be rapidly infected if the virus gets into detention centres.