When asylum seekers first arrive at Manston, a former military base outside Ramsgate in Kent, they are ushered from one enormous, grubby marquee to the next for a series of interviews and checks.
As many as 1,000 people a day are processed at the site after crossing the Channel in small boats, and interviews continue through the night. Upon arrival in the UK, exhausted and disorientated, their phones and other belongings are taken from them and placed in distinctive blue plastic bags.
Signs flash up on TV screens in various languages. “You have entered the UK illegally from a safe country, France. As a result you will not be able to obtain citizenship. You will not be able to settle in the UK.”
People are only supposed to stay at Manston for 24 hours before being released to hotels, but some stay longer.
In what is thought to be one of the largest class actions of its kind against the Home Office, at least 250 people who were detained at Manston in the second half of 2022 are suing for unlawful detention and other breaches of their rights.
The centre was dangerously overcrowded at the time – designed to hold a maximum of 1,600 people, it was accommodating 4,000 – and grappling with outbreaks of infectious diseases including diphtheria and scabies. The Kurdish asylum seeker Hussein Haseeb Ahmed, who was processed at Manston, died in hospital after contracting diphtheria on 19 November 2022.
The former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Neal, has said the poorly managed and insanitary conditions there were so bad he was rendered speechless, and documents disclosed in a court action show Home Office officials admitting they had “completely lost our grip” on the situation.
An independent inquiry is under way into events at Manston in the second half of 2022. Staff are clear that conditions have improved, but many who spoke to the Guardian still say the site is a wholly inadequate place to accommodate traumatised asylum seekers.
‘Sleeping while walking’
Increasingly dangerous journeys across the Channel mean more people are arriving in Manston in a bad condition. The number of people taken to A&E from the site has increased almost sevenfold in the last three years from seven in 2022 to 46 in 2024, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from East Kent hospitals university NHS foundation trust. People are taken to A&E with crush injuries from the dinghies, fractures and infectious diseases.
According to one of the six current staff members at Manston who spoke to the Guardian, asylum seekers arrive not having slept or eaten for several days. “They are so tired they sleep like the dead,” they said. “They are constantly bleary-eyed. Some even seem to be sleeping while they’re walking.”
Another said: “Sometimes they can be sitting on hard chairs from 2.30am until 9.30am with no access to fresh air. If they want to go to the toilet they have to put their hand up to ask. English people would go berserk if they were treated like that.
“Some have fuel burns, crush injuries or hypothermia from their journeys. Many, including the children, are scratching themselves raw from having the salty sea water on their bodies.”
A third said: “One young man from Afghanistan who arrived at Manston on a small boat said to me: ‘If you paid me a million pounds I would never go on that sea again. Every minute of my journey on the dinghy I thought I was going to die.’”
War films shown on TV
The staff members said some of their colleagues had little concern for the asylum seekers who find themselves there. One was suspended after waking someone up with their foot. Another was sacked after pulling a sleeping boy to his feet and making disparaging comments about him.
Twenty-nine staff were sacked after failing drug tests in 2024, a sixfold increase in the space of a year. An investigation was launched earlier this year after a racist message – “fuck off you [N-word]s, go back to where you came from” – was reportedly “blasted out” on portable radios used by Home Office contractors. The ministry and its contractor, Mitie, condemned the language used.
One staff member said their colleagues sometimes played war films on the TVs at the centre. “Surely these war films should not be shown when people who have fled war are sitting in the marquees,” they said. Home Office sources said contractors watching inappropriate content on site would be subject to a disciplinary process.
Staff also said a common response from hostile colleagues to new arrivals’ requests for pain medication or permission to sleep was: “Well if you don’t like it here you shouldn’t have got on the boat.”
When staff were escorting asylum seekers who had just disembarked from the air-conditioned coach that had brought them to Manston, one remarked: “These coaches are far too good for them.”
‘Try walking a mile in their shoes’
One staff member said it was a shame so many of their colleagues did not take the time to listen to the asylum seekers’ stories. “One boy from Vietnam told me he was escaping from someone who wanted to remove his organs to sell them,” they said. “A 74-year-old Afghan woman told me she made the journey here alone.”
Another said: “We see a lot of negative things in the media about people who come to the UK being dangerous terrorists or people who just want to come and work here illegally. I have found people to be grateful and polite.
“They are not swearing, they are not aggressive. These people are so exhausted and so traumatised yet somehow they keep themselves so calm. I think they’re the most controlled people I’ve ever met.”
A third said: “All they want is a role and a purpose in life like everybody else. They are very resilient people. I say to some of my colleagues who criticise them: ‘Try walking a mile in their shoes.’”
