Irish baby girl held in UK detention centre
One year old Percieliz Ikolo, born in Dublin's Rotunda Hospital, is being held with her Cameroon-born mother at the Dungavel centre in Scotland, where nearly 200 children have been detained over the last year. The much criticised centre, meant for those due to be deported, is a closed facility surrounded by barbed wire and controlled by uniformed guards.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has launched an investigation and said officials are attempting to establish the facts of the case.
Mercy Ikolo, the child's mother, said she and Percieliz were picked up last Sunday in the North as they returned to Dublin from a visit to Scotland. She claims to have told authorities her child was an Irish citizen even producing a birth certificate and pleaded to be sent back to Ireland.
Despite this, she said last night the authorities threatened to send them to Africa, going as far as bringing mother and child to Glasgow Airport. They were returned to the centre when she protested.
"It was a mistake to go to Scotland but just let them send us back to Ireland," she said. "I have an Irish-born child. I can't believe that they will not let me return to Ireland. They told me they were in contact with the Irish government and that the Irish said they didn't want me back. I can't believe that."
Legal experts yesterday said the case was the clearest challenge yet to the State's obligations to Irish-born children following the Supreme Court judgement on the rights of their parents. The court ruled parents do not have residency rights but the children are Irish citizens.
While Mercy Ikolo still hopes to be granted asylum here, one legal source said: "No matter what the status of the mother is, if the child is born here then she is an Irish citizen. Questions have to be asked of the authorities in Britain, having been told that the child was born in Ireland, what action was then taken and whether the authorities here were informed."
The Home Office, which has attracted fierce criticism over its policy of detaining children of asylum seekers, said it could not comment on individual cases but defended the centres as a necessary arm of the asylum process.
The Irish Refugee Council described the case as "horrendous".
Noeleen Blackwell, a solicitor with experience in immigration law, said a child should stay with the mother. "If that child was here in Ireland it would not be considered proper to hold her in detention."
