Migrants to be detained in former prison with asbestos

A FORMER prison where asbestos has been found is to be used as a detention centre for migrants before deportation to Rwanda or another third country.

Residents have been told the former HMP Northeye in Bexhill, East Sussex, will house up to 1,200 asylum seekers under detention rather than as a camp from which they can come and go.

It is part of an effort by ministers to combat shortages in immigration detention capability ahead of being able to enforce the Illegal Migration Act.

The legislation gives ministers powers to detain anyone who arrives illegally in the UK and deport them.

The Home Office currently has 2,500 places at detention centres, with a further 2,000 planned, but the first will only become available next year.

The deportation of migrants to Rwanda has been stalled until the Supreme Court rules on the legality of the policy later this autumn.

Northeye had originally been earmarked to be an “open” asylum camp like the former RAF bases at Wethersfield in Essex and Scampton in Lincolnshire, where migrants would have been free to come and go. Asbestos has been found in two of 77 boreholes drilled at the site. It has also been confirmed to be in the heating system, a massive boiler room exposed to the elements, and there are traces of asbestos in the ground as a result of a prison fire in 1986.

Huw Merriman, the transport minister and the site’s local MP, said: “With this now being proposed as a ‘closed site’, the existing buildings will require total demolition and rebuild, in a manner different to the original proposals.”

He said the biggest concern had been the fact that asylum seekers would be free to come and go in circumstances “where security is difficult to assess”.

As a closed, detained site this would no longer be the case and the migrants would not be expected to remain for longer than 45 days in Northeye.

Nigel Jacklin, co-founder of the No to Northeye Campaign, said: “Having visited and spoken to campaign groups in Wethersfield and Scampton, it is clear that local people lack confidence in the Home Office’s ability to take local residents’ concerns into account.”

It was also revealed yesterday that the judicial review against using RAF Wethersfield and Scampton as asylum camps will be heard at the high court at the end of October.