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On Tuesday, the United Kingdom\u2019s Home Office informed staff at Yarl\u2019s Wood that they must return to prisoners a guide on their rights as asylum seekers and, more generally, people facing deportation. This self-help guide has been circulating in English immigration detention centers for more than ten years, but only recently did the prison staff decide that, \u201cgiven the nature of the content<\/a>\u201d, it\u2019s contraband. \u201cThe publication, entitled For Asylum Seekers and their Supporters, a Self-Help Guide Against Detention and Deportation, advises on how to pursue legal rights and seek help.\u201d Sound pretty dangerous, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n Since April, Alice Wanja-Maina has been a prisoner in Yarl\u2019s Wood. She explains<\/a>, \u201cI signed for them but then they took them away. The guides help us fight deportation and detention. The guards said you are not going to have them, that they were banned and that I was going to be deported back to Kenya. The book is really good. It helps us prepare our cases. We don\u2019t have lawyers to help us. This gives us the confidence to carry on. To be enclosed in a detention centre like this is really bad. They treat us like animals. I can\u2019t sleep. I suffered rape and torture in Kenya at the hands of a traditional African organisation which is opposed to western culture. I can\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>\n When Alice Wanja-Maina says, \u201cThey treat us like animals,\u201d she echoes the statement of a Yarl\u2019s Wood manager, chatting with his mates about Yarl\u2019s Woods African women prisoners: \u201cThey\u2019re animals.<\/a> They\u2019re beasties. They\u2019re all animals. They\u2019re caged animals. Right? Take a stick in with you and beat them up.\u201d<\/p>\n