The practice of detaining asylum-seekers alongside sentenced prisoners in Northern Ireland has been condemned by the SDLP.
Nine asylum-seekers are detained at Magilligan Prison in Co Derry. In the 18 months to June 2000, 64 male asylum-seekers and 11 female asylum-seekers were detained in the North's prisons. Female detainees were held on the remand wing of the women's prison at Maghabery, Co Down.
Mr Gerard Lynch, an SDLP Limavady borough councillor, said he was "gravely concerned" about the practice and expected the SDLP to raise the matter in the Assembly when it reconvenes in September.
"These people are being imprisoned, not housed. It is simply not good enough that these innocent people, who have been convicted of no crime, should be locked up in the way they are at the present," he said.
The practice of imprisoning certain asylum-seekers is not unique to the North. In Britain, if there are not sufficient spaces in detention centres, asylum-seekers are held in remand prisons.
But the position in the North is unique in that there is no detention centre and in that male detainees are held alongside sentenced prisoners.
A spokesman for the British Home Office said there were no plans to build a dedicated detention centre in the North, "principally because we only ever have three to five people in detention there". He maintained this was the position as he understood it despite being told that the prison service said the figure was nine.
The spokesman said that throughout the UK asylum-seekers were mostly detained if it was felt there was a risk they would abscond. These asylum-seekers would have broken the conditions of their stay, such as leaving approved accommodation, or may be pending deportation.
Less than 1 per cent of asylum-seekers were so detained, he said, with the rest provided with accommodation by the immigration service and local authorities.
A barrister specialising in immigration in the North said this was often a very subjective decision. Ms Vicky Tennant, who works with the Law Centre (NI), said: "In my view they detain people here who would not have been detained in Britain."
There is no figure available for the number of asylum applicants in the North. In 1998 there were 400.
Some asylum-seekers from the Republic have been detained in the North after entering it inadvertently or not realising the consequences. In these cases, it can take as long as two months for the asylum-seeker to be sent back across the Border.
Other detainees can be imprisoned for anything from days to seven months or more. One man was released from Magilligan last year after being there for 14 months.
Ms Tennant called for a reappraisal of the entire detention policy in the North. "Rather than call for a new detention centre to be constructed, I think there should be a total rethink about who is detained and possibly a dedicated facility within the prison system," she said.
Although "there is a real problem with the detention of asylum-seekers who may be quite vulnerable alongside convicted prisoners", the most serious difficulty faced by the asylum-seekers is isolation. "I have one Chinese client in Magilligan who speaks no English at all," she said.
The prison's location, at the tip of a promontory away from any population centre, adds to this isolation as it is very difficult to reach by public transport. Ms Tennant called for asylum-seekers to be kept in a more accessible place.
The Home Office spokesman emphasised that they would never put a family into prison but said that in such cases the family could be split up with "the principal family member" being detained while other members were put into care.