 Staff at a 'prison-like' immigration centre used racist language and forcibly moved detainees around naked, an inquiry has found. Brook House immigration removal centre (IRC), near Gatwick Airport in West Sussex, was 'entirely unsuitable for detaining people for anything other than a short period of time', the four-year probe concluded. The inquiry, chaired by Kate Eves, was launched two years after a 2017 Panorama investigation into alleged abuse suffered on the site. In an 800-page, three-volume report, it has concluded that Brook House was 'not sufficiently decent, secure or caring for detained people or its staff at the time these events took place'. According to the report, the average stay at the facility in July 2017 was 44 days, but five people had been there for between one and two years. Among 33 recommendations made by Ms Eves in the report was the introduction of a 28-day maximum time limit for a person to be held at an IRC. However, she stopped short of calling for Brook House to be closed, as one lawyer representing people who had been held at the site suggested to the inquiry. The report says it was 'common' for staff to use 'racist and derogatory language' when speaking about detainees and 'unacceptable, often abusive behaviour was dismissed as banter'. The facility has been the site of recent protests against the government's treatment of migrants (Photo by Niklas Halle'n / AFP) There was 'considerable evidence' that people working on the site were 'too quick to employ force', Ms Eves said, and the mocking phrase 'if he dies, he dies' was used repeatedly. She cited an incident depicted in the Panorama programme, in which a detention custody officer put his hands around a detainee's neck and called him a 'f**king piece of shit', adding: 'I'm going to put you to f**king sleep'. Other instances included men being forcibly moved while they were naked or near-naked, a){kind=link}
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Staff at a ‘prison-like’ immigration centre used racist language and forcibly moved detainees around naked, an inquiry has found.
Brook House immigration removal centre (IRC), near Gatwick Airport in West Sussex, was ‘entirely unsuitable for detaining people for anything other than a short period of time’, the four-year probe concluded.
The inquiry, chaired by Kate Eves, was launched two years after a 2017 Panorama investigation into alleged abuse suffered on the site.
In an 800-page, three-volume report, it has concluded that Brook House was ‘not sufficiently decent, secure or caring for detained people or its staff at the time these events took place’.