Inside the migrant gateway to Britain that staff say is a TINDERBOX: Manston is where most illegal boat migrants are taken for processing, but the truth about what happens there is as alarming as it's scandalous
They are the first words uttered by boat migrants to British authorities after they set foot on our soil: 'Where is the hotel?'
It is what they invariably say when they get off buses at the giant migrant reception camp on a former RAF base in Manston, Kent – the centre that processes all who arrive on traffickers' boats.
We know this because, for the first time, whistleblowers at Manston have talked to the Mail in an investigation that lays bare in terrifying detail how overwhelmed staff struggle to adequately process the sheer numbers of migrants arriving on peak crossing days at Manston's doors.
The whistleblowers told us that inadequate checks mean they are powerless to prevent migrants who have criminal pasts from being released on to Britain's streets, and staying in hotels across the country.
'They ask us that hotel question immediately,' a young male worker at the camp said this week. 'They expect to get a hotel bed straight away and that is one key reason they come to the UK. We are told not to answer – to distract them by offering a bag of crisps or a bottle of water.'
So pressing is the concern about where they will stay, added the workers, that 'only the fear of not being given a hotel stops them misbehaving or running out of control at the camp. They could overwhelm us by sheer numbers in what feels like a tinderbox about to explode'.
The Manston workers said they are told by the Home Office to refer to the thousands of migrants passing through the camp as 'residents' as if they are paying guests.
Alarmingly, they are instructed not to talk about their private life to migrants, who are mainly young men, in case the information puts them at risk after the strangers leave the camp and are free to roam Britain.
'We must not say if we have children, for instance, or where we live because our families could be targeted by one of these foreign men at a later date,' the Mail was told.
The whistleblowers talked to the Mail on the phone, via social media, face to face, and through intermediaries.
All spoke on the condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisals from the Home Office which runs the camp amid great secrecy. Some have left Manston recently; others still do occasional shifts there on security, medical, cleaning, catering or administration duties.
What emerged from our conversations is a deeply concerning picture of a migrant reception centre they described as 'chaos' and 'a joke'. And crucially, a centre where migrants 'routinely lie' about their backgrounds, their ages, and their nationalities – so no one can discover whether they have a criminal past.
'Most coming in are men. No one knows who they are, or their history,' a worker said.
'The men could be murderers or paedophiles. They throw away their identity documents either in France before getting on a boat or at sea when they are travelling over.'
Another worker added: 'We know what the migrants tell us is often a falsehood but there is nothing we can do. We have to write it on their records as though it is the truth.
'Time and again, the migrants give us the same fantasy story as if they have learned a script. The Afghans say they are running from the Taliban. Some Africans from strict religious countries say they are gay and they will be killed at home for their homosexuality. A lot even give the same birth date of January 1.'
A third worker explained: 'Britain is being hoodwinked. We have to accept at face value that their name and country is correct. There is no way of telling because, since Brexit, the EU police don't allow Britain to cross check the fingerprints or information collected when the migrant first entered Europe before arriving at Calais for the boats.
'Some will have been deported from EU countries for crimes. Some will have spent time in prison abroad.
'But we don't know – we can only start with a blank sheet. Yet within days these strangers are sprinkled around the country. If they are considered a potential danger to us staff, why are they not considered a risk to the British public?' At least 150,000 migrants have arrived on traffickers' boats to Britain in the last seven years.
Nearly 2,000 have sailed over in the last 8 days, bringing the tally since Labour took office last July close to 40,000.
Today, hundreds more throng on the French coast waiting to cross the 21 miles to Dover.
All the boat arrivals are put on buses from Dover port to Manston reception camp for fingerprinting and background checks. They spend 24 hours in a 'custody' marquee, before being moved to on-site chalets for up to three days as medicals are performed and more forms filled in.
At least 90 per cent of them claim asylum, telling Manston staff they face persecution, oppression, or war in their home country. They are not allowed mobiles at the camp, but are permitted to use on-site phones to call immigration lawyers for advice.
Within 'normally just 72 hours', they are bussed out, in vehicles with darkened windows and often at night, to requisitioned hotels or leased Home Office houses up and down Britain.
'The Manston staff are getting depressed, even suicidal,' claimed one of our informants.
'As for the migrants themselves, the men often have sexually transmitted diseases, and scabies affects a lot of them.
'I have seen foreign mothers so tired and dehydrated as they waited in the custody marquee on a hard seat, that they nearly let their babies slip from their laps to the ground.
'The sights you see are unimaginable. Some 'residents' are whole families of three generations from the grandfather to his grandchildren. They are clearly here seeking a better life but still claim to be asylum seekers.'
Our probe into the camp coincided with a damning report this week that exposed the extent of child rape grooming gangs in Britain's towns and cities.
The author, Baroness Casey, revealed for the first time that asylum seekers and foreign nationals are involved in a 'significant proportion' of the around 12 live police investigations into this hideous crime.
The disclosure has led Home Secretary Yvette Cooper to accept Baroness Casey's recommendation for the mandatory collection of the ethnicity and nationality of all child sex abuse suspects. Foreign-born paedophiles will, in future, be banned from claiming asylum.
Ministry of Justice data also shows that one in five child-sex offence convictions involves foreign nationals. The worrying statistic was handed to the Independent MP Rupert Lowe who is running his own national
'Rape Gang Inquiry' after the Government initially refused to do so. He says not a 'single foreign national should be in our country raping children'.
Shadow Home Secretary, Tory Chris Philp has also stated that a 'significant' number of the paedophiles involved in grooming gangs are asylum seekers or foreigners. 'More illegal immigrants have entered the UK across the Channel so far this year than any other in history,' he added.
All this is highly relevant to what is going on at Manston and begs the question of whether the checks made there are worth
the paper they are printed on. Last year the Mail published a map of England showing where asylum seekers had been convicted of crimes, including paedophilia, rape, knife attacks and murders, around the country. Many had slipped in by boat across the Channel.
Our report highlighted an Afghan asylum seeker, Rasuili Zubaidullah, 22, who had drugged, raped and killed a 13-year-old girl in Vienna, Austria, in 2020.
Just weeks after committing the crime, as a manhunt for him was launched by Vienna police, he sailed to Britain on a trafficker's boat using a fake name.
Saying he was a refugee, he was sent to a migrants' hotel in Whitechapel, east London. Only when Austrian immigration police tracked him to the hotel, alerting the British, was he deported to face a trial which led to his murder conviction.
What is plainly an asylum charade has been going on for years. It began well before Manston was opened in 2022 in response to traffickers sending more and more small boats with migrants across the Channel.
Almost 20 years ago, under Tony Blair's Labour government, the Mail first blew open the scandal of asylum seekers and their links to crime.
In 2006 we exposed the case of Oule Doucoure, an African who was then 23, who smuggled himself into Britain – on what was believed to be a Channel ferry lorry – before raping and half strangling a young nanny in a terrifying assault.
Doucoure, who had found work as a kitchen porter working in the restaurant of Harvey Nichols' store in Knightsbridge, spied the 21-year-old woman on a London bus and followed her home. He nearly killed the woman who fainted in the attack.
He was jailed and immediately claimed political asylum, joining the 3,500-strong ranks of asylum seekers among 11,000 foreign criminals in our prisons.
Doucoure had destroyed his passport and refused to tell the authorities who he was or which country he came from – just as so many arriving at Manston do.
Back then, one in every ten foreign criminals was deliberately obscuring their identity and country of birth to hamper deportation. The result? Like Doucoure, whose whereabouts is now unknown, they were deemed to be stateless convicts who, therefore, could not be sent back anywhere whatever their bad deeds.
What is certain, is that some asylum seekers – including a number of those coming in on the boats through Manston and currently living in hotels – are involved in sex crimes against under-age British women and girls.
Only this week an Afghan asylum seeker who raped a 15-year-old after following her in a Scottish town centre was jailed for nine years. Sadeq Nikzad, 29, attacked the teenager in Falkirk in 2023 soon after arriving illegally on a small boat.
His lawyers told the judge he had not been educated in 'cultural differences' between Britain and Afghanistan. We have monitored the websites of self-appointed 'online child protection' teams, Britons who snare internet predators of under-age girls and hand them to the police. The videos are shocking viewing.
In one sting, a man said to be an asylum seeker from Afghanistan is caught by a team in Newcastle upon Tyne after attempting to meet a 14-year-old British girl. He says on video: 'I want to meet my little girl. I will marry and convert her (to Islam). Get the police. I don't care.'
Another video from a team shows the capture of 'lonely' asylum seeker Kalid Oryakhel. He had been in the country nine months and living in a Home Office migrants' hotel in Otley, near Leeds, when he tried to groom two young girls on-line.
A court in 2023 heard the 26-year-old 'predator', believed to be an Afghan, had invited the children to 'make love' in the hotel garden, then sent them lewd messages and a three-minute film of him masturbating. He was found guilty and jailed for 45 months.
Our contacts among the online protection teams told us this week: 'The migrant hotels do harbour sex pests and predators. It is naïve to say otherwise.
'They are getting to live among us in Britain and are endangering our children.'
None of this would surprise the Manston whistleblowers who are ordered by the Home Office never to talk about their work.
'We have got to the point where we cannot remain silent,' said one of them. And who, in all honesty, can blame them?
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