Members of No Borders Manchester bought our attention to the challenges faced by Asylum seekers in Manchester forced to ‘sign on’ in Dallas court, which is something the government forces them to do regularly. They are not allowed to bring friends or family in with them, and have their phones confiscated on entry. There have been numerous occasions where this ‘signing on’ has been used by immigration agents as an opportunity to indefinitely detain, and potentially deport these asylum seekers. Because they have no way of informing friends and family of their plight, there are times when no one is aware that they have been detained until much too late.

We wanted to develop an extremely simple safety check, which isn’t reliant on smart phones or internet access, or on constant staffing. imok is a text-bot which enables asylum seekers to ‘check in’ to an automated system as they enter the court house. If they do not ‘check out’ within a certain period of time, the system sends an auto generated message to a nominated contact (friend, family member, or lawyer), who is then able to follow up and ascertain whether they are safe or not, and take action to support them if they have been detained.

The text bot is overseen and promoted by No Borders Manchester (who we have worked with to translate it into a number of different languages), and has the potential to be rolled out in other similar settings around the country, as well as in other settings where a lo-fi check in/out safety bot would be useful.