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Better shell protection to stop escapees, more surveillance and a hundred new places for them if they refuse to leave Sweden voluntarily.
These are the Swedish Migration Agency’s plans for the repository.
– It’s so sick, that they spend so much money on sending us back, says Hassan – who is currently on the run from the storage facility in Åstorp.
One early morning in March, the police were alerted to the Migration Agency’s detention center in Åstorp in Scania, one of the facilities where people with refusals are locked up awaiting deportation. A watchman from the guard company Avarn discovered three men shortly after five o’clock who had got out through a hole cut in the wall.
Aftonbladet has spoken to one of the escapees, we call him Hassan.
He claims they used a pair of tin shears that came from inside the vault, but says he doesn’t know how they got hold of it.
– It took four hours to cut that thick metal. We didn’t get help from outside, but did it ourselves, he says.
Spacemen offered staff money
According to the Migration Agency’s own incident report, the tin shears were never found.
The investigation states that several mistakes were made during the escape – the second in a short time from the storage facility in Åstorp. For example, staff had not acted when other inmates at the detention center turned up the volume on the television during the night, presumably to cover up the noise when the wall was breached.
Afterwards, the other detainees had to change rooms and collect their belongings, before the police had time to document evidence. According to journal entries, one of the escapees had offered staff money and asked “how to escape in the best way”.
The authority concluded that there was a breach in the safety assessment and in the shell protection at the repository. Because current rules do not allow searches of people locked up in custody, tools can be smuggled in, the report notes.
Cost of Hassan’s time in custody: Over a million
Hassan, one of those who escaped, describes how he walked for hours along the E4 at dawn. He met police cars that were out looking for him.
– When I heard sirens in the distance, I threw myself into the ditch so they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t know where I was, only had a small simple cell phone that is allowed in the depot.
Hassan is originally from Egypt, and has been in Sweden for many years. Here he is also convicted of several crimes, such as theft, robbery and assault. But he says detention is worse than prison.
– Inside the repository, it’s like we’re not worth anything, like the whole world has let you down. They do what they want with us. If you have committed a murder, you can get help from a lawyer, but in custody you don’t get help from anyone.
It wasn’t the first time he escaped. He once managed to escape from the detention center in Flen in connection with a hospital stay. In total, he has been locked up in various detention facilities for seven months of his life.
Every day, a person in custody costs over five thousand kroner.
This means that Hassan’s time in custody cost over a million kroner.
And with the new migration policy, the costs of detainees will skyrocket. The number of deportations must increase by 50 percent – only in 2023. Our round-up shows that there is feverish activity at several authorities to meet the goal.
Here, “super storage” is to be built
One hundred new places are planned in the next two years at the detention center, where people with deportation orders are placed if they do not return voluntarily. Today, the places are often almost fully occupied. Children and people with functional disabilities are also detained, our review shows.
At the same time, all detention facilities must have higher fences, walls and gates, to stop escapes. The government has flagged that it wants to allow staff to physically search those locked up.
Prison-like conditions, but unlike the Correctional Service’s institutions where you are for a fixed period of time, the people in the detention center often lack a future.
It is more crowded, few activities and great mental illness, says James Andersson from the volunteer organization Soulidarity and Human Rights, which supports undocumented refugees on the run.
– The repository is what many fear the most. You’d rather live outside in freezing temperatures than in the warehouse. The psychological strain of living in a vacuum is hard to describe unless you have experienced it yourself, he says.
More storage places in a secret location in Norrland
Right now, on behalf of the government, plans are being forged for a completely new repository, to be built in a so far secret location in Norrland.
The Flen facility, one of the country’s largest, is to become a “super repository”. It is expanded with 50 seats, a new escape-proof shell protection and high-tech solutions for surveillance. According to the Swedish Migration Agency’s planning, there are economies of scale in locking up many people in the same place.
– Increasing the number of places at existing detention centers to a certain level is deemed to be more cost-effective, says Magnus Frid, deputy director of planning at the Swedish Migration Agency.
Super storage simplifies the staff’s scheduling, administration and all-around activities. Like how to transport detainees to the airport for forced deportation.
Left Sweden – and the son
It was such a plane to Egypt that Hassan was put on one occasion, legs strapped and handcuffed, among all the ordinary travelers in the airplane seats. But he struggled so much that personnel from the border police had to wrestle him down.
– I didn’t want to and refused in front of the plane door. Then they took me down to the floor, pushed me down with one knee and held my neck.
The plane could not take off.
And Hassan was instead sent to a new detention center.
But in a way, he has now done what the Swedish authorities want – and left the country. Today, Hassan is somewhere in southern Europe. He does not know if he can ever come back to Sweden, where he also has a small son. If he returns, he risks being locked up in the detention center, again.
– It’s so crazy, that they spend so much money on sending us back! Instead of solving the situation and giving me that little residence permit.