A recently conducted investigation discovered that employees at an immigration center, which resembled a prison, used racist words and physically forced detainees to move without any clothes on.
The investigation found that the Brook House immigration removal centre, located near Gatwick Airport in West Sussex, was not suitable for keeping people detained for anything other than a short amount of time.
The investigation, led by Kate Eves, started two years after a 2017 Panorama investigation into reported mistreatment experienced on the site.
In a very long report, it was found that Brook House did not provide a good and safe environment for the people in detention or the staff when these things happened.
The report says that in July 2017, most people stayed at the facility for about 44 days. But there were also five people who had been there for one to two years.
Ms Eves made 33 suggestions in her report. One of her suggestions was to have a maximum time limit of 28 days for someone to be held at an IRC.
But she did not say that Brook House should be closed, even though a lawyer representing people who were kept there suggested it to the investigation.
The report says that it was normal for staff to use racist and disrespectful words when talking about detainees. They also found that unacceptable and sometimes abusive actions were dismissed as harmless joking.
Ms Eves said that there was a lot of evidence showing that the people working on the site were too quick to use force. They also kept saying the phrase “if he dies, he dies” in a mocking way many times.
She mentioned a situation shown on Panorama where a detention officer put his hands around a detainee’s neck and used offensive language towards him, threatening to harm him.
In other situations, there were men who were forced to move without clothes or with very little clothes on. There were also staff members who just watched a person who had passed out after trying to hurt themselves, without doing anything to help.
Ms Eves didn’t like the answers given by the Home Office and contractor G4S, who were in charge of the center at the time.
She said that she disagreed with the story told by both the Home Office and G4S about the events at Brook House. They claimed that only a few G4S staff were responsible for what happened, but she believed that their claims were just a way for both organizations to avoid taking blame.
Serco has taken over the management of the center from G4S.
Ms Eves wants the government to answer her suggestions in the next six months.
A spokesperson from the Home Office said: “The mistreatment that happened at Brook House in 2017 was not right. ”
The government has made important changes to make sure that people who are detained are taken care of and treated well. They have made the rules stronger, made sure that everything is done in a clear and honest way, and made sure that the people they hire to do this work are doing a good job.
We are dedicated to keeping everyone safe and secure in all Immigration Removal Centres. We will also make sure to learn from the Brook House incident so that it never happens again.
‘We are grateful to the Chair and Inquiry team for their report and are currently reviewing each recommendation carefully. ‘