Villawood
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre (VIDC)
Villawood was opened in 1976. It houses mainly visa overstayers. In 2008 it was described by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission as the "most prison like" of all the detention centres.
There is a Residential Housing Project area of the facility and this is where families with children are housed. Some children have been locked within this compound for over 3 years, two babies have known no other home. All the children and parents in the RHP face indefinite detention after ASIO made non-challengable adverse security findingds about them.
Villawood has long been the scence of protests, it has also long been a centre where people have been detained for 12 -18 months and in some cases, even longer. It is the centre from which many forced removals take place, where an asylum seeker is bundled into a van and taken to the airport - in some cases, sent to a country where they have no residency.
In December 2011 the NSW Coroner released a scathing report after investigating three suicides that had taken place at VIDC within three months (in 2010).
Villawood Vollies arranges a host of activities and visits to the facility. Still no comparison to freedom, but a benefit of being in a metropolitan location, as compared to Nauru, Leonora, Curtin etc.