Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre in County Durham houses women waiting to be deported from the UK.
At a demonstration against the center on Durham’s Palace Green campaigners called for the government to show “compassion”.
The Home Office said “the public expects” the UK to remove “those with no right to be in the UK”.
Agnes Tanoh, who fled violence on the Ivory Coast, said detention “destroys” women.
“It’s not a place to put people who are already distressed and depressed,” she said.
Ms. Tanoh said earlier that the government had broken its promise “to reduce its use of detention because of the harm it causes” by opening Derwentside last year.
The center at Hassockfield, Consett, which has a capacity of 84 people, replaced Yarl’s Wood as the UK’s only women’s-only center.
The site previously served as the Medomsley detention center for young offenders and was the scene of widespread abuse for decades before it shut in 1988.
Aerial view of Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre
Image caption,
The site previously housed young offenders in Medomsley Detention Centre
People’s Assembly North East, which organized the protest, said many of the women at the center were “innocent of any criminal activity and are detained for unjust, unnecessary and inhumane administrative purposes”.
Many had been trafficked, tortured, or abused, and “confinement and imprisonment resurface trauma”, it said.
Also speaking at the demonstration, human rights lawyer Margaret Owen said the women at the center had “gone through a living hell”.
She said: “When they come here what are they met with? Not the compassion, the kindness, and the protection they deserve.”
Human rights lawyer Margaret Owen at the demonstration on Palace Green in Durham City
Image caption,
Human rights lawyer Margaret Owen said the detentions were “utterly unlawful”
The Home Office said 95% of those liable to be removed are managed in the community rather than centers such as Derwentside.
A spokesperson said vulnerable people were only detained when this was outweighed by immigration considerations “such as the risk of non-compliance with immigration bail or for the protection of the public”.
North Yorkshire poet and writer Kate Fox, also speaking at the protest, said the women were not a danger.
“That’s just demonizing women who are struggling,” she said.
