Government plans to re-open two immigration centres as detention of asylum seekers increases

The Home Office plans to open a detention centre in Hampshire after a facelift
Migrant Channel crossing incidents
Migrants board a bus at Dungeness, Kent after being rescued in the Channel earlier this month
PA
Miriam Burrell26 September 2022
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The Home Office will re-open a detention centre for asylum seekers in Hampshire as it ramps up the use of detention amid an uncertain future of the Rwanda policy.

Tory MP for Gosport, Stubbington, Lee on the Solent and Hill Head, Caroline Dineage, said she met with the Home Office Minister, Tom Pursglove, to discuss plans for the re-opening of the Haslar Immigration Removal Centre.

The centre was closed in November 2016 by the Ministry of Justice.

The site will be re-developed with a new 600-bed detention centre by late 2023 as part of the plans, Ms Dineage said.

The detention centre will be used for men who are either foreign national offenders or “failed” asylum seekers, she said in an update on Friday.

“It will comprise a new-build living unit alongside refurbishment and remodelling of existing accommodation, meeting statutory standards, taking account of the [Stephen] Shaw reviews on welfare in detention and with a full range of healthcare and recreational facilities and access to legal advice.

“The Home Office intend to appoint a single supplier for the site to deliver all services – with the exception of healthcare services which we expect to be commissioned by NHS England - including custodial, within the detained accommodation and a Prior Information Notice covering this contract was issued [on Friday].”

A plan to reopen Campsfield House immigration removal centre in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, was announced in June. A motion signed by 31 MPs in the House of Commons opposed the plans and raised “concerns about inhumane and cruel conditions across the detention estate; notes that seeking asylum is not a crime”.

The Home Office plans to re-open the two immigration detention centres to detain 1,000 male asylum seekers linked to the Rwanda scheme in a plan which is projected to cost £399 million, the Guardian reports.

The home secretary, Suella Braverman, has indicated she will take an even harder line on migrants than her predecessor Priti Patel, The Times reports.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman
PA Wire

The Home Office has been approached for comment.

The Government has increased the use of detention for new arrivals who have been issued with paperwork notifying them of the government’s intention to remove them to Rwanda, a charity earlier told the Standard.

They are often people who have arrived in the UK on small boats, Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) research and policy manager Rudy Schulkind said.

The total number of migrants arriving this way in 2022 is close to 30,000, PA reports.

24,004 people entered immigration detention in the year ending June 2022. At the end of June 2022, there were 2,038 people still in immigration detention, Home Office statistics show.

That is almost three times more than at the end of June 2020 (698) - when the pandemic was at its peak - and 24 per cent more than pre-pandemic levels at the end of December 2021.

Meanwhile the number of people detained in prisons under immigration powers increased from 359 at the end of December 2019, to 665 at the end of December 2021.

“Around about May or June, we noticed a significant number of people being detained, having recently arrived in the UK, and having been issued with paperwork notifying them of the government’s intention to remove them to Rwanda,” Mr Schulkind said.

“The Rwanda policy... heralded a kind of new era in how immigration detention is used in relation to asylum seekers. Basically a lot more people are being detained.”

In response, the Home Office told the Standard that since the pandemic, “an increasing proportion of those entering detention have been small boat arrivals who have been temporarily detained in order to confirm their identity and register their asylum claim.”

“The public expects us to remove people who have no right to be here and immigration detention is a critical part of that system,” the Home Office said.

The first flight of migrants bound for Rwanda was grounded after a series of legal challenges and the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights, putting the policy on hold until the end of the High Court battle.

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