The UK government’s appalling treatment of migrants in recent years has left some charities and activists feeling like trying to influence government policy is less of an uphill struggle and more of a brick wall.

The End Detention group and Women for Refugee Women have now launched a campaign that they feel has a real chance of winning. They’ve taken a new angle: instead of focusing on government policy, they are focusing on a corporate giant that provides the infrastructure needed for detention centres to operate: Mitie Group plc. 

They are asking people to contact three well-known consumer brands, Sainsbury's, Ikea, and Bravissimo, asking them to boycott Mitie. 

Sainsbury's, IKEA and Bravissimo have been chosen as targets of the campaign because they are well-known and have expressed commitments to supporting refugees and women's rights...

Mitie runs 50% of the Home Office’s detention facilities, including Derwentside, the main UK detention centre for women. The company’s logo is stamped everywhere inside the centres, making it clear to the detainees who are profiting from their confinement. 

Mitie has an annual revenue of £4bn that recruits over 70,000 people. It provides services such as management, catering, hygiene and personnel to entities like the Home Office, prisons, schools, train stations, the NHS, and a range of private companies.

Serious human rights concerns have been raised about conditions in the detention centres Mitie is involved in running. In December 2022 it was revealed that male staff were being used in "constant supervision" of women at risk of suicide, a practice which Home Office guidance prohibits.

“Wretched” conditions were also reported by the borders watchdog which said he was left speechless during a visit to a migrant processing centre at Manston which Mitie manages. He says the centre had “already passed the point of being unsafe.” 

Migrants were supposed to be held at the short-term holding facility for 24 hours, however, the article shows that families had been kept there for weeks and lived in tented accommodation sleeping on kit mats in "wretched conditions". 

Similar reports have been made about Mitie-run detention facilities for several years. 

This is the first time a formal boycott call of Mitie over its role in detention centres has been called, but activist groups have targeted the company before.

In February 2023, a Durham university group Durham Student Action for Refugees (STAR) called on the university not to renew its cleaning and security contracts with Mitie, claiming that “Working with Mitie means that Durham is complicit in labour and human rights abuses against migrants”...