I have just read the moving story of a Hove woman called Gift who’s being locked up over Christmas – along with her two kids, Harvey and Kandy, both pupils at Hove Park school. You really couldn’t make it up.

It is just the latest example of an immigration system in the UK that is not only devoid of humanity – it’s in breach of human rights law and an insult to common sense too.

Gift, Harvey and Kandy are being held at a detention centre at Heathrow (their fourth location in a fortnight, incidentally) awaiting deportation to Zambia, from where the family originally came.

But this family have lived here for seven years: it’s all the children have ever known.

How can sending them ‘home’ help anyone? It’ll cost every taxpayer a few quid (immigration detention centres don’t come cheap) and probably condemn the kids to lives of poverty, by disrupting their education (Harvey is all set to take his GSCEs in 2009). Of course it will make enemies of the state of all their friends and neighbours too – hardly delivering a safer community.

The UK Border Agency needs to get its act together, and deal with cases more quickly. If it really can’t bring an immigration case to resolution in seven years then it should grant claimants exceptional leave to remain. Where children are involved their legal rights – to an education free from arbitrary detention and disruption, to their health, to a decent home – really must take priority.

For the sake of us all, this family really needs to be back in Hove for Christmas.