A 26-year-old human trafficking victim has been locked up with her two six-year-old children at the Joutseno immigration removal center, which the victim has described as a jail, according to Yle. The young Nigerian mother was sent to the immigration removal center on 18 February and is awaiting deportation back to Italy on 25 March.
The victim stats that she was forced into prosteution to pay back a 30,000-euro debt to her human traffickers.
“This [Joutseno] is a prison,” she was quoted as saying in Yle, adding that she is not a murderer, drug trafficker and that “seeking asylum is not a crime.”
We agree with the victim: Joutseno, together with Metsälä in Helsinki, are “prisons” or detention centers where asylum seekers await deportation. We call them immigration removal centers.
Migrant Tales has written countless stories about detentions in Joutseno. Below are some pictures. You decide wheter Joutseno is a jail or not.
Listen to the girls description of her family’s life in the Joutseno immigration removal center.
Helsinki’s Metsälä immigration removal center.