When David Neal, the former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, visited the Manston asylum processing centre in Kent at the height of the crisis in October 2022, he said the conditions he found there were so alarming it left him “speechless”.
People were crammed on the dirty floors of marquees to sleep, toilets overflowed with faeces, there was inadequate access to medical care and new arrivals were referred to by a number on a wristband rather than by their name.
The asylum seekers bringing the legal challenge against the government’s decision to downgrade the planned inquiry said they endured brutal and unacceptable conditions.
One woman was held at Manston for 21 days and was forced to live and sleep in an overcrowded room with more than 100 detainees. She feared for her safety and said there were regular fights.
She was referred to by a number she had been assigned, which was based on the boat she had travelled on and was allocated by officials who had counted how many people were on board. When she was menstruating, she was offered male underwear.
Another man said he was detained for six days and only had three square metres of personal space to live in. He claimed he had to eat on a wet and muddy floor, suffered racist abuse and was assaulted by guards, who punched him, dragged him along the ground and kicked his head and body.
Home Office lawyers claimed the man had attacked a guard and was subsequently restrained.
In documents submitted to last week’s high court hearing to determine the kind of investigation that should take place into what went wrong at Manston, the Home Office said there were 21 use-of-force incidents by guards at the facility in October 2022. Some of those involved in the legal challenge are children aged between six months and six years. Their lawyers say that conditions for small children there were particularly difficult.
According to documents submitted to the court, repeated advice was given to the then home secretary that Manston “was not operating lawfully”.
One family – a mother, father and two young children – who had travelled overland from Iran to northern France by foot and car in a journey taking more than a month, arrived at the processing centre at the beginning of October 2022. They said they were horrified by what they saw after being taken to a marquee on the site, soaking wet and chilled to the bone.
The mother said: “We thought they would only keep us there for a day or two but we were locked up there for nearly 30 days. We had to sleep on filthy cardboard in the marquee with the children because there was nothing else for us. We were so frightened for our children – that place wasn’t safe for them. The situation in Manston was drastic.”
They had been forced to leave Iran after experiencing repeated raids on their home by government officials because they opposed the regime.
Once in Manston, she said, they were only allowed outside for an hour a day. Their phones were confiscated, preventing them from contacting their family to tell them they had survived the Channel crossing.
“After two years, we have not yet recovered from what happened to us at Manston,” the mother said.
