Detention centres: care under the thumb of repression

Publié le January 5, 2026 par Getting the Voice Out  - Read this post in Français, Nederlands

It is a well-documented fact that places where people are deprived of their liberty are places where respect for fundamental rights is not a priority. Behind the walls, voices are raised to denounce ill-treatment. Among these places of confinement are detention centres.

Detention centres are administrative detention centres for undocumented migrants in Belgium. They are managed by the Immigration Office (IO) under the direction of the Minister for Asylum and Migration. In these centres, the Belgian state detains people it considers to be in an irregular situation, labelling them ‘illegal’, while they await deportation from Belgian territory. It is the voices of these people that we are relaying here.

We are a collective that fights against the detention of undocumented migrants. We want to bring their voices out beyond the walls. We are fighting for a world without borders and without prisons, in which everyone would be free to live, move and settle wherever they wish.

Detention centres violate many fundamental rights, including access to adequate healthcare.

Medical independence: a fiction

Each detention centre has a medical service (comprising a doctor and nurses). This staff is directly employed by the IO. As is the case in prisons, medical staff are therefore not accountable to the Ministry of Health. This structural subordination raises a major problem: how can genuine medical independence be guaranteed when medical staff are employed by the institution that is itself responsible for organising detention and deportations?

In theory, medical services are supposed to be available at all times in the centres, and doctors are supposed to maintain their professional independence. In practice, this independence is largely illusory. The centre’s doctor is required to provide medical care, but in most centres, they are rarely present or accessible. Among other things, they validate ‘Fit to Fly’ certificates, which certify that a person is ‘fit’ to be deported by plane. They thus become both supposed caregivers and actors in a repressive policy. Caregivers, caught up in a structure of control, cannot fulfil their primary mission.

Care becomes an administrative tool, and the suffering of detainees is reduced to mere data, negligible in the logic of deportation.

Care that is often symbolic and inadequate

Numerous testimonies report all kinds of medical problems, leaving people in states of extreme emergency and abandonment. Whatever the symptom, we are told that the response is often the same: paracetamol or sedatives. The use of ‘chemical restraints’ (sedatives or antipsychotics administered forcibly or abusively) is also mentioned in some cases, which are far from rare.

In addition, external consultations with a specialist are very difficult to access (rarely authorised, and at the detainee’s expense). One of the standard responses given to people is: ‘You will receive treatment in your country after your deportation’ (regardless of the quality of healthcare in the destination country, the inaccessibility of certain treatments, or the danger faced by the person upon arrival).

Organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) are trying to take action to ensure that medical care is provided in closed centres. A project has recently been launched to organise visits by volunteer doctors to the centres. Their aim is to visit specific individuals to provide a second opinion to that of the centre’s doctor. This follow-up by MSF is not therapeutic: its sole purpose is to ensure that detainees receive appropriate care. In some cases, the medical report produced by MSF can be used by the lawyer of the person concerned during legal proceedings.

MSF is constantly looking for volunteer doctors to join the detention centres team. If you are interested in this type of commitment, we encourage you to contact them.

The lack of psychological support is equally worrying. The few psychologists who work there also depend on the IO and have been perceived (according to MSF) as being ‘tasked with making detention acceptable’ rather than providing real support. In such a context, how can a therapeutic relationship of trust be established and real care provided?

Structural psychological distress

As in all places where people are deprived of their liberty, forced confinement and living conditions (overcrowding, inadequate food, repression) create a particularly anxiety-inducing environment. The particularity of closed centres is that people are detained for an indefinite period (in theory a maximum of two months with a few extensions, but in practice it is often much longer), and their detention is marked by the constant fear of deportation. Already particularly vulnerable due to their migration journey and the instability of their administrative situation, people suffer from deteriorating mental health and psychological pressure.

“To be honest, psychologically we are not doing well at all. I feel like I’m going crazy. Lots of thoughts go through my head, things I wouldn’t even think about outside. But here, it’s as if it’s normal, you have to think about it to pass the time.”

We are told that many people develop anxiety and depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or sink into despair. Hunger strikes, self-harm and suicides are not isolated incidents: they reveal extreme distress in a system that refuses to listen. Inside and outside the centres, hunger strikes are a means of protest. Putting one’s own body at risk becomes a way of resisting detention. A way of regaining control over freedoms that have been taken away.

“I too think I’m going to stop eating, it’s all I have left to do to gain my freedom. One man has been on hunger strike for forty days. He’s going to die, and we’re here unable to do anything. It’s torture to watch.“

Deaths kept quiet

The death of Tamazi Rasoian at the Merksplas detention centre in February 2023 is a sad illustration of the violence of this opaque system. After a hunger strike, this Kurdish man of Georgian origin was found dead in his cell. His family, fellow detainees and several NGOs reported suspicious marks and injuries on his body, but the Immigration Office quickly concluded that it was a ‘natural death’. Fellow detainees mentioned forced injections (possibly of antipsychotics). The family has still not received any answers. 

This tragedy is not an isolated case: many deaths in detention centres have been closed without further investigation due to a lack of independent oversight mechanisms. One notable example is the recent death of Mahmoud F. at the 127bis detention centre last October. The case is being treated as a suicide, but an investigation has now been opened to determine the exact circumstances of his death. As with other deaths in detention centres (nearly a dozen have been recorded in the last ten years), the centre staff, the IO and the Ministry of Asylum and Migration have said very little, if anything at all.

Deprivation of liberty is harmful to health, regardless of the conditions of detention

Detention centres themselves are destructive, both to physical and mental health. Deprivation of liberty, even for a limited period, is contrary to fundamental rights. Our collective is campaigning for the day when these centres no longer exist and the border system is abolished.

We are not campaigning for improvements in healthcare or detention conditions in these prisons: we are campaigning for the pure and simple end of detention, whether for administrative or judicial reasons.

Article written at the request of the non-profit organisation I.Care, which is interested in promoting health in closed environments. The article was published in the winter 2025 issue of MursMurs magazine, which focuses on the practice of care in hostile closed environments (available here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/b26399de-31f9-4399-b4c6-b52c49777985).

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