Sandford House (41 Homer Road, Solihull) is the Home Office's regional reporting centre, where asylum seekers from across the West Midlands are forced to travel all the way, every week, to 'sign on', further contributing to their systematic impoverishment and humiliation by the border regime.

Many people disappear from Sandford House without warning when they go there to report. People are picked off by immigration officials, then forcibly "restrained" by yellow-shirted security and then held 'securely' in Sandford House before being interned in Britain's network of detention centres, where they can face years of incarceration before being deported to unsafe countries from whence they have fled. Snatch squads, which forcibly snatch families and vulnerable people in dawn raids, also operate from the centre, driving white Securicor vans. [audio report of the snatch squads operating from Sandford House]

Over the last month or so, the corporate media have stepped up their war against asyslum. Mainstream media reports have repeatedly implied that all asylum seekers are "dangerous criminals" and called for the double-punishment of refugees who have broken the law by deporting them to countries where they could face imminent death or torture, whilst ignoring the real plight of people displaced by the very wars states create. This month also saw the appointment of Liam Byrne, M.P. for Hodge Hill constituency in Birmingham, to the post of Immigration Minister. So will he continue in the footsteps of the previous sacked Immigration and Home Office ministers, scapegoating refugees in order to displace attention away from the deepening crisis of legitimacy facing Neo-Labour?

There is going to be a national day of action against reporting centres on 22nd June. Birmingham NoBorders are also planning a series of events during Refugee Week, including a tour of the border regime, screenings and fundraisers. Don't miss it!