Published on 14 September 2024
Immigration enforcement officers carry out dawn raids as part of Operation Vector. Credit: Home Office
Campaigners say these “shocking” accounts foreshadow further harm that could be inflicted under the new Labour Home Secretary
Reports Aaron Walawalkar. Edited by Harriet Clugston.
The “inhumane” treatment of migrants rounded up in a “futile” operation ahead of the now-scrapped Rwanda scheme has been laid bare in new testimonies from Home Office staff, which reveal self-harm attempts and cases of detainees being struck and subject to pain-inducing restraint.
Campaigners say these “shocking” accounts from an immigration enforcement operation launched under the Tory government in April, disclosed to the Observer and Liberty Investigates under freedom of information laws, foreshadow further “physical and mental harm” that could be inflicted under new Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plan to ramp up deportations of refused asylum seekers to 2018 levels.
The cache of internal documents also include testimonies from security staff at the UK’s “worst” immigration removal centre – which detail two cases of force being used on frustrated detainees who remained locked up weeks after the Rwanda scheme was postponed until after July’s general election.
Dozens of migrants facing removal to Rwanda were detained as part of the surprise initiative, dubbed “Operation Vector”, launched days before the 2 May local elections in what critics say was an “act of political theatre”.
The arrests continued until at least one week before Rishi Sunak announced the snap general election on 22 May – and confirmed the next day that no flights would take off until after the 4 July poll.
“There is little doubt that the last Government used the survivors of war, torture and modern slavery as political pawns as their polling plummeted."
The new government could now be hit by costly compensation claims, with the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) preparing to mount legal action, arguing the detention of roughly 150 Rwanda-earmarked migrants was unlawful and against Home Office policy as it could not imminently remove them. Home Office accounts show the department paid out £56.8 million in compensation for over 2,700 wrongful detentions in the five years before the Rwanda raids.
Fran Heathcote, general secretary for the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, whose members include immigration enforcement officers, said the union “opposed the Rwanda scheme from the start because we knew it was inhumane as well as impractical”.
“What also concerns us is the likelihood Rishi Sunak knew full well the Rwanda scheme was futile, and causing distress to individuals, but continued to push it ahead of the General Election to make a political point,” she said.
Steve Smith, chief executive of Care4Calais, added: “There is little doubt that the last Government used the survivors of war, torture and modern slavery as political pawns as their polling plummeted.
“The Rwanda plan may have been scrapped, but the anxiety it caused will live with those who were forcibly detained by politicians willing to use human suffering as an electioneering tool.”
The revelations come after the current Home Secretary last month (21 Aug) announced plans to remove thousands of migrants, including refused asylum seekers, from the UK by the end of this year – which Smith warned “simply means more despair”.
Measures announced by Cooper include redeploying hundreds of caseworkers to process their cases and ploughing ahead with Conservative plans to reopen two immigration removal centres.
The Operation Vector reports record how Home Office immigration enforcement officers used force 60 times between 30 April and 15 May, giving a rare glimpse into the despair of those woken up in dawn raids or handcuffed as they showed up for routine reporting centre appointments.
BREAKING: The first people set to be removed to Rwanda have been detained. pic.twitter.com/2WWNhQVC1l
— Home Office (@ukhomeoffice) May 1, 2024
There were four recorded instances of migrants attempting to harm themselves after being apprehended.
One officer wrote of intervening to prevent a man tying his coat around his neck while “screaming and crying” in the back of a van transporting him to a detention centre.
In two other cases officers described restraining detainees banging their heads against the walls of transportation vans, while a third was handcuffed after reportedly headbutting a window sill.
Other troubling instances include a case in which the wife of a man being detained was described as becoming “very erratic/hysterical”.
An officer wrote: “She was shouting and screaming on and off the floor […] A few of us needed to collectively push her out of the room the subject was in as it seemed like she was going to try and prevent him from being taken to the van. We collectively blocked the doorway so she wouldn’t get back in.”
Another woman was described by an officer as becoming “very upset” and began “crying and shouting” as she was escorted from the family room of a reporting centre into a van.
Higher levels of force were used on those who resisted.
On 29 April – the first day of the roundup – an officer reported striking an asylum seeker with a ‘palm heel’ technique, pinning him to the ground and putting him in a wrist lock after he attempted to escape while being escorted to a cell van.
Two weeks later another wrote of using a pain-inducing wrist lock technique on a vulnerable man who resisted being handcuffed after he turned up at a reporting centre.
The anxiety of some migrants appears to have been exacerbated by a lack of translators, including during early morning raids on their accommodation.
An officer wrote of one incident just before 6am: “The male was confused and had just woken, and there was a small language barrier. He was displaying sighs [sic] of being a little jumpy around his bed … for our safety and his own and to reduce any risk of any escape attempts, I decided to handcuff the male.”
Another man became severely distressed after being handcuffed inside a reporting centre and sustained a cut to his wrist as he put up a struggle, asking repeatedly to call his brother while “dry heaving and spitting on the floor”, according to a report.
An hour and 20 minutes later, and apparently only after arriving at a detention centre, “the duty manager took over and got someone who spoke the language to let the subject know what was going on,” an officer wrote.
The documents also offer an insight into how frustrations mounted inside Harmondsworth immigration removal centre – where inspectors recently said conditions are the “worst” they have seen. A spokesperson for Mitie said it has since taken “significant action” to address inspectors’ concerns and that improvements had “already been made”.
Custody officers employed by private contractor Mitie used force on detainees earmarked for Rwanda in two incidents as recently as 11 and 12 June – nearly three weeks after the scheme was placed into election limbo, rendering no realistic prospect of them being removed.
A spokesperson for Mitie said: “Use of force is only used as a last resort, and our accredited Detention Custody Officers (DCOs) have all undergone specialist use of force training in line with Home Office guidance. With this accreditation, DCOs are lawfully permitted to apply use of force when it is reasonable, necessary, and proportionate.”
Rishi Sunak and the Conservative party were approached for comment. The Home Office declined to comment.
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A version of this story was published with the Observer.