DUNGAVEL Immigration Detention Centre has always been an open political sore. That sore looks set to continuing festering after the Home Office announced yesterday it had abandoned plans to replace the centre with a new short-term holding facility near Glasgow Airport.

The decision by Renfrewshire Council to reject the application for the new facility means Dungavel will remain open. This begs the question: what happens now? Thirteen years ago, The Herald campaigned vigorously against the Home Office’s policy of imprisoning children and families at Dungavel.

Our coverage helped bring about a change in policy that led to a 2010 Westminster ruling that families detained north of the Border would be moved to Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire to give them access to specialist family, child and support services. For many Scots, Dungavel had become the second most powerful symbol of unwanted UK facilities in Scotland after the Trident base at Faslane.

Branded “racist and inhumane”, Dungavel has remained the focus of numerous protests over the treatment of detainees and the length of some detentions. Only yesterday there was yet another reminder of why Dungavel continues to attract so much ire and opposition. Irene Clennel, a woman who has been married to a British man for 27 years, is just the latest high-profile case of someone being held prior to deportation.

Mrs Clennel, from Durham, was given indefinite leave to remain in the UK after her marriage but periods spent back in Singapore caring for her elderly parents appear to have invalidated her residential status. This is a woman whose husband is British and whose children were born in the UK, but last month she was detained and brought by van to Dungavel House.

Is it any wonder Dungavel has become synonymous with all that is wrong with the UK’s migrant and asylum policies? As Jerome Phelps, director of campaign group Detention Action, said, the Home Office decision to continue with Dungavel means migrants will still be detained indefinitely without time limit in Scotland. It signals, too, that the UK Government is no nearer to fulfilling its promise to reduce the length of time migrants are detained.

From arbitrary detention to dawn raids, to cutting support and leaving people destitute, the history of this policy area is disturbing. The news that Dungavel will remain open means almost certainly that another disquieting chapter in that history is set to be written. The circumstances surrounding the detention of Mrs Clennel is a point in case.

The focus should be on making our migrant and asylum system fairer and more humane but the debate has taken place in a climate of suspicion rather than one that prioritises the humane treatment of fellow human beings.

The granting of refugee status to those fleeing war, persecution or natural disasters is part of being in the company of civilised nations. Dungavel is again making headlines for the wrong reasons. Its presence for now remains a blight on Scotland’s human rights landscape. As such it is likely to continue to be a running political sore.