I am glad the Watford Observer is joining Amnesty to campaign to keep refugee families together. Another way of keeping families together is for the government to stop locking up parents as part of its hostile immigration system.

The Home Office locks up almost 30,000 people every year. This includes children, elderly people, pregnant women and survivors of torture and human trafficking. The UK is the only country in Europe that locks people up with no limit on how long they can be held. There is no decision by a judge. People are then held in detention centres in terrible conditions, often without access to legal representation.

If you want to hear first hand what this is like, please come to a public meeting organised by Watford Quakers on October 23 at 7.30pm at the Quaker Meeting House, 150 Church Road, Watford W17 4QB. A member of Freed Voices will explain his own experience of being detained, joined by a Quaker who visited him there. You can also learn about the realistic alternatives to immigration detention, and find out how you can help.

Everyone will be warmly welcomed – unlike the system of detention being carried out in our name.

Jonathan Carmichael

Berry Lane, Rickmansworth