The Irish Refugee Council has written to the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, urging him to urgently address the "abusive treatment suffered by immigrants at the hands of State officials".
Mr Peter O'Mahony, chief executive of the council, says in the letter he is seriously concerned "about the appalling insensitivity shown recently to a number of immigrants and their children by certain officials of the State".
He tells the Minister "you will be aware" of the case of a multiple rape victim who had been a client of the Rape Crisis Centre in Mayo until her removal from the State earlier this month.
The RCC had "exceptionally" written to the Minister indicating its belief that the woman would be unable to travel because of the her health and psychological problems, he says. "Despite this the woman was forced, without having first had the opportunity to contact her RCC counsellor and with less than an hour to prepare her young children for the unplanned trip, to undertake a lengthy overnight drive to Dublin with strangers before being taken off to the UK with great haste the next morning."
He also refers to a case where infant twins were admitted "without a full change of clothes" to a Dublin hospital and held there over days while their mother was held in prison "apparently in the expectation that she would be deported". A court challenge has established this woman was wrongly arrested.
Mr O'Mahony says this is not the only case of which he is aware where children were separated from their parents when the parents were wanted for deportation. The Minister has been "vigorous" in his pursuit of immigrants, continues Mr O'Mahony. "Some years prior to taking on your current ministerial role you referred to the 'indignity and contempt with which the Irish State was treating' particular groups of asylum-seekers and you mentioned that 'black and coloured people are treated differently by our immigration service'.
Appealing for training for officials in dealing with traumatised women and vulnerable children, he says "minimum levels of dignity" are not being afforded to vulnerable people.
