Latest news with #Manston
Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Daily Mail
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?
The Independent
18-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
How the British Red Cross tried to blow the whistle about conditions inside crisis-hit migrant detention centres
The Home Office failed to act on grave warnings from the British Red Cross about an unfolding crisis at two immigration centres despite employing them to support migrants at the sites and report back, newly released documents reveal. The documents – that the Home Office took over two years to release – raise questions about officials' handling of Western Jet Foil migrant processing centre in Dover and Manston centre in Kent in the autumn of 2022. Emails, performance reports and letters sent by the Red Cross to senior Home Office officials between September and November 2022 – disclosed to the Independent under freedom of information (FOI) laws –show how the charity raised 'deeply troubling observations' at the two sites and tried to get the Home Office to act. Among the issues raised were the confiscation of crucial medication, concerns about migrants' access to urgent medical care, and people being housed in leaking tents without adequate sleeping provisions. Red Cross staff were on site at both centres in the autumn of 2022, when a humanitarian crisis began. Manston became severely overcrowded, with refugees unable to access healthcare and forced to sleep on damp and mouldy wooden flooring. As conditions spiralled out of control, the Home Office came under increasing pressure from MPs, unions and the media to act. The Kent site, which was designed to hold up to 1,600 people, was housing 4,000 at the end of October 2022. On 19th November, a detainee died. After weeks of delay, on 22nd November, the government announced that Manston had been emptied. This period coincided with the tumultuous 49-day Liz Truss premiership. The home secretary at the time, Suella Braverman, was forced to resign for using her personal email on 19 October, resulting in Grant Shapps taking up the position for six days, until Ms Braverman returned on 25 October when Rishi Sunak became prime minister. Documents show that the security situation became so concerning that the Red Cross decided to withdraw completely from Western Jet Foil, a smaller processing site that can house up to 250 migrants. Just two weeks after this, far-right extremist Andrew Leak firebombed the facility and later killed himself at a nearby petrol station. Red Cross staff also attempted to contact the Home Office's whistleblowing email address in late October but received a response saying the service would not accept 'correspondence from an external source'. An inquiry into the crisis at Manston processing centre is underway to establish what went wrong and why, though it is not clear whether this probe will cover Western Jet Foil. The Red Cross programme, named the Channel Crossing pilot, was launched on 8 August 2022, with teams aiming to be at either Western Jet Foil or Manston sites for a few days each week. They would provide humanitarian support to the migrants on site, escalate problems to the contractors and Home Office, and regularly give feedback to civil servants about what was happening. Both sites were being used as temporary holding facilities for small boat migrants who had just arrived in the UK. At the time, migrants should only have been held at these sites for no more than 24 hours. By early September, the Red Cross teams were identifying concerns about Manston and Western Jet Foil and relaying these back to the Home Office, documents show. They pressed for the Home Office to provide better translation services at the sites, and to screen migrants for medical issues and vulnerabilities such as signs of modern slavery. They told officials that clarity was needed to determine how migrants could get urgent medical care, and explained that some asylum seekers had had crucial medication confiscated. They reported that staff at the site were making regular jokes about guessing the ages of young migrants, and there was widespread use of glance age assessments, the charity reported. Later that month, the charity asked that the Home Office provide people with things to do, such as colouring books, magazines or toys to help dispel tensions and boredom at Manston, and they asked for more bed rolls and blankets so that people could sleep. Conditions were getting worse and in late September the charity continued to press for action, concerned that people were being held far beyond the 24-hour limit at Manston. Numbers had now started to exceed capacity as more migrants arrived and weren't moved out. In a brief sent on 30 September, the Red Cross noted that the medical unit at Manston was being overwhelmed, with skin rashes and respiratory issues affecting more and more people. 'Conditions were generally poor with no dedicated accommodation; limited access to medical care; sanitary provisions, fresh air or good quality food. Staff we spoke to were well aware of the poor conditions with many expressing frustration that more wasn't being done to make immediate improvements', the report said. The team had particular worries about block 10, a unit holding 50 or so families in two medium-sized halls. The buildings were mouldy, damp and poorly ventilated, the charity reported, and had no heating. Clean clothes, underwear and sanitary products were running low, people were complaining of respiratory problems and headaches, and were sleeping on the floor without blankets, the brief warned. By early October, news about what was happening at Manston started filtering out, with the Prison Officers Association raising the alarm on the 6th. Their statement likened the situation 'to a pressure cooker coming to the boil with a jammed release valve'. Emails reveal that the day before this statement was issued, Red Cross staff were pushing for an urgent meeting with Home Office directors to address their concerns and to seek assurances that action was being taken to deal with the situation. On 10 October, Red Cross teams at Western Jet Foil were reporting significant numbers of new arrivals, with staff tired and shouting at refugees. Tents had been put up overnight to increase capacity, some were leaking, and not all had sleeping mats. A report about a visit to Western Jet Foil on 12 October reveals that Red Cross staff were told by the Border Force commander that up to 1,000 people were expected to attempt the Channel crossing that day as the weather was looking good. This was on top of the 325 people already being processed at Western Jet Foil. Red Cross staff found that around 100 adult men were being held in the main holding area on benches or sitting on the floor, with some exhibiting 'a state of agitation'. At 1pm that day, immigration officers asked the Red Cross to vacate their on-site office so that they could undertake age assessments of the migrants. The report of the day continued: 'The only option offered was an internal office within the holding area where 50 male detainees were shouting, acting aggressively towards security staff and jumping up and down on wooden benches. This was totally unsuitable'. Describing the conditions, the Red Cross brief said: 'Many of the detainees were in poor health with obvious lung infections and previously some BRC staff have reported flea/ insect bites. The presence of such numbers of confused, frustrated and in some cases, aggressive male detainees was very intimidating. There was a palpable air of unease among Border Force and Interforce security staff as more detainees arrived for processing and tempers were obviously short.' At 1.30pm, the team decided to leave due to the 'inherent potential dangers of the site' - and suspended their in-person work at the site two days later. A day after the Western Jet Foil visit, the Red Cross's director of refugee support sent a formal letter to three senior Home Office officials demanding urgent action at the Kent and Dover sites, in light of the department's failure to act on the charity's fortnightly reports. The letter was sent as a follow-up to a meeting between the Red Cross and senior Home Office officials on the 11th. The letter listed the team's 'deeply troubling observations' from their time at Manston and Western Jet Foil, warned that the government was at risk of breaching the Human Rights Act, and said they were likely detaining people unlawfully. It was also accompanied by a letter sent by the Red Cross's legal department to the Home Office's legal department. Despite an acknowledgment from the Clandestine Threats commander Dan O'Mahoney and attempts to arrange a further meeting, the Red Cross would not receive a formal response to their concerns for two weeks - two days after Manston was cleared of asylum seekers and the crisis had abated. Among other concerns, the letter reported that staff were refusing to let people sleep when there were high arrival numbers, were removing individuals to isolation buses as a form of punishment, and acting rudely or insensitively towards migrants. A week after the Red Cross sent the ultimatum letter, it emerged publicly that some migrants at Manston had been diagnosed with diphtheria, a contagious infection that affects the skin, nose and throat. On receiving no substantial response to their 13th October letter, the Red Cross tried to whistleblow about their concerns and contacted the internal Home Office whistleblowing email address on 27th October. A response from the whistleblowing email address on 9th November said that it would not accept 'correspondence from an external source'. As officials rushed to ease the overcrowding, a group of 11 asylum seekers were left at a central London station without accommodation after being taken out of Manston. The Home Office said at the time that they believed the migrants had accommodation with friends or family available to them. Now battling accusations that she had ignored legal advice and blocked plans to use hotels to ease the overcrowding at Manston, Ms Braverman arrived at the immigration centre in a Chinook helicopter on 3rd November. She also visited Western Jet Foil, which was by this point reeling from a firebomb attack. Having exhausted all avenues for escalation, on 11th November, chief executive of the Red Cross Mike Adamson wrote to senior Home Office officials, requesting urgent action once more. The Red Cross finally got a formal response from Mr O'Mahoney on 24 November where he admitted that the 'situation at Western Jet Foil and Manston has been really challenging over the last four months'. He explained: 'We have been in a situation where the inflow of arrivals has outstripped the capability to move people into onward accommodation. This has presented us with real logistical issues.' Alex Fraser, British Red Cross UK director for refugee support, said: 'In 2022, the British Red Cross was asked by the Home Office to run a local pilot to provide humanitarian support to some of the men, women and children who had made the dangerous journey to cross the Channel in a small boat. 'We were extremely concerned about the humanitarian situation at Western Jet Foil and Manston and we made this clear at the time. No one should experience overcrowded accommodation that puts them at risk of disease and potentially being detained unlawfully. We know from our work supporting people in similar temporary accommodation what a damaging impact it can have on them. 'The serious problems at these two sites are indicative of the wider issues facing the asylum system. We need a more efficient, compassionate asylum system – one that treats people with humanity, dignity and processes their claims fairly.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'The home secretary acted on the advice she was given to establish an independent inquiry into events at the Manston Short-Term Holding Facility between June and November 2022, in line with the commitments made by her predecessors, and on the terms agreed through the subsequent legal process. "That inquiry will now proceed, and we are supporting it fully. It would be inappropriate to comment further whilst it is ongoing.'
