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LONDON — A Spanish woman held in an immigration removal center near London has been released after four days in detention.
U.K. Border Force officials detained the 25-year-old woman from Valencia upon her arrival at London Gatwick Airport on May 3 on the grounds that she was going to the country to look for a job but did not have a work visa.
The woman, who does not want to reveal her name, had been held at the Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire since Wednesday, and put in self-isolation after cases of COVID-19 were detected in the wing of the center where she was being kept.
But she left the center Friday and has been allowed to complete the compulsory 10-day self-isolation period at the home of her sister, who also lives in the U.K., according to a close friend who tracked her down after her detention and told her story to POLITICO.
The woman had previously been told she would have to stay at the center, where she did not have access to her mobile phone or most of her belongings, for the entirety of the self-isolation period.
She was returning to the U.K., where she had worked in 2019, after a period in Spain. She had a National Insurance Number and had planned to apply for pre-settled status under the government’s EU Settlement Scheme upon her arrival to Britain.
EU diplomats have expressed concern about the transfer of the bloc’s nationals to immigration removal centers, where they are being held for up to seven days in some cases before being returned to their home countries. This mirrors the treatment nationals from non-EU countries in the same situation have long faced.
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