A month earlier, she had been just another teenager at Notre Dame School for Girls in Plymouth. But in the early hours of the morning on 24 February 2005, Sebrin Thaha's home was raided by immigration officers and, along with her mother Ruir and 12-year-old sister Hannah, she was snatched away to Tinsley House Removal Centre near Gatwick airport, a prison in all but name. Over the following weeks, the sisters were first separated from their distraught mother and put in foster care and then allowed to join her at another detention centre, Yarl's Wood near Bedford. Sebrin's mother Ruir attempted to take her own life on three separate occasions during her detention.

Then, on 17 March 2005, the family were deported to Germany from where, at the time of writing, they may now be sent on to Iraq. Five escort officers - four male and one female - woke the family at two in the morning to accompany them to the airport from Yarl's Wood. Sebrin saw her mother being hand-cuffed and told the female officer that she did not want to go into the waiting van. She says that the officer then pulled her hair and threatened to punch her if she caused any problems. 'Then she grabbed me by my wrist and my arm and dragged me to the van. It was very disturbing and I was crying. When I tried to say something the woman put her hand over my mouth to stop me.'

Sebrin says that she was then pushed into the van. 'The woman [officer] started swearing at me and pulled my hair and hit me in my body. I was pushed into the van and hit my head.' She says that her wrist and arm were sore and swollen and that her younger sister also had blue marks on her wrist. Their mother was cuffed to the seat all the way to the plane while Sebrin and Hannah were held during the van journey by escort officers. After the flight to Duesseldorf, the family was split by the German authorities, leaving Hannah twenty miles away from her older sister, while their mother was taken to a mental health clinic. Sebrin fears that her mother may attempt to harm herself again. Sebrin's greatest fear, though, is that the family will be deported to Iraq shortly. 'We want to live in Plymouth not die in Iraq', she said.

It was a brutal ordeal that no teenager should have to endure. Because of the widespread hostility to asylum seekers, inspired by the newspapers and politicians, such abuses generally go unnoticed. To school students, on the other hand, who see these abuses being inflicted on their friends and fellow students, the inhumanity of arbitrarily removing young people from their home, school and community is clear. And, increasingly, it is school students themselves who are protesting against it - with some success.

• Lorin Sulaiman, 15, her mother, Amina Ibrahim, 51, and sister Eva, 16, were granted permission to stay in Britain for two years by the Home Office, after a campaign led by students at the Mayfield school in Portsmouth. When news broke that the campaign had won a two-year reprieve for the Syrian Kurdish family, Mayfield's headteacher Derek Trimmer told the Guardian, 'It is still the school holidays but all the pupils have been texting each other with the good news. This is not just good news for Lorin but for the rest of the pupils too. If she had been plucked away from her friends the effect on them doesn't bear thinking about.' Students at the school had been offered counselling when it first became apparent that the family might be deported. (Diane Taylor, 'Kurdish girl wins battle to stay in Britain', Guardian, 2 April 2005)
• Within a day of his detention at Dover Removal Centre, the entire sixth form at Canterbury high school had mobilised to get fellow school student Amin Buratee released. Along with staff, they held vigils outside the centre, wrote press releases, gave newspaper interviews, appeared on local radio and television and lobbied their MP. Amin, a 19-year-old who lost his family in Afghanistan and fled for his life, had been living with two other 'unaccompanied' Afghan teenage asylum seekers until he turned eighteen in November 2004. He then became liable for deportation and was detained. In the end, Amin was allowed to return to his home and school and, at the time of writing, has permission to stay until he finishes his exams in June 2005.
• A family of Kosovan Roma asylum seekers was freed from detention after a campaign by school students in Glasgow to prevent their deportation. Sadush Murselaj, his wife, Tade, both 44, and their children Agnesa, 15, Gentian, 12, and nine-year-old Leonard, were released from Yarl's Wood detention centre near Bedford after hundreds of pupils at Drumchapel High, which Agnesa and Gentian attended, signed a petition opposing their detention. (Damien Henserson, 'Kosovan family is free for now... thanks to pupil power', The Herald, 25 March 2005)
• Acland Burghley School in Camden, north London, supported Yannick Malela, a Congolese teenager who was facing deportation. Yannick and his family won permanent leave to remain in the UK after a successful campaign by staff and students, in which his classmates wrote letters to MPs. (Genevra Fletcher, 'Asylum family thanks school', Times Educational Supplement, 4 July 2003)

We believe that it is never in the best interests of children or young people to remove them from their school and community against their will. That hundreds of young people suffer this fate every year in Britain is a national scandal. And across Europe, campaigns are springing up to end the disgrace of removing children from their schools. In Ireland, the National Teachers' Organisation president Austin Corcoran said at the union's annual congress in March 2005 that deportations were 'terrorising pupils'. He stated: 'Our schools should be given the status of embassies. Parents should have an assurance that when their children are placed in a school, they will not be abducted from their place of learning by the state.' His stand came after public outcry against the deportation of Nigerian student Olunkunle Elunkanlo from Palmerstown College, Dublin. (Niall Murray, 'School deportations "terrorising pupils"', Irish Examiner, 29 March 2005). In France and Belgium, the campaign group 'education without borders' has similar objectives.

The aim of the schools against deportation campaign is to send a strong message from the education sector that the best interests of the child or young person should be the primary consideration when deciding whether to deport someone attending a school or college in Britain. This approach is backed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Britain has signed up. Article 3 of the Convention requires that: 'In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.' Unfortunately, the government has opted out of the Convention as it pertains to nationality, immigration and asylum, allowing for the best interests of the child to be ignored.

At the launch in September 2003 of the government's Green Paper Every Child Matters, which itself was a response to the death in 2000 of Victoria Climbie, aged eight, education minister Charles Clarke said: 'The Green Paper is titled "Every Child Matters". This is no hollow slogan. It is a commitment that is driving all my work and that of all of us involved in working with and for children.' But asylum-seeking children have been exempted from the legal protections for children which have since been introduced. Clause 11 of the Children Act, currently passing through parliament, places an obligation on organisations to protect the welfare of children. But it excludes the immigration authorities. Together, these exemptions imply two standards for the care of children: one standard for Europeans and another for the rest.

We are calling for that double standard to end. Please join us by signing the declaration.