Victims of torture and trafficking are being wrongly detained by the Home Office, a damning report has found.
An inspection of immigration detention centres found that legally-required checks on whether migrants have mental or physical health issues that make imprisonment unsafe were not being properly carried out.
David Neal, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration (ICIBI), said that unevidenced claims that migrants were “abusing the system” to secure their release were stopping vulnerable people getting support.
“The enthusiasm to protect vulnerable people in immigration detention was held back by a narrative that placed abuse of the system ahead of protecting the vulnerable,” he said.
“I do not accept the limited evidence provided to support this assertion [that migrants are lying about their condition to be freed] and there were few obvious activities underway to address this concern.”
The watchdog warned that an “important safeguard” known as the Rule 35 process was not being used consistently by detention officials, and that unevidenced “scepticism” was creating serious risks.
Mr Neal added: “On the basis of this inspection, the Rule 35 process needs to be called out for what it is – ineffective.
“I have no doubt that some migrants are abusing the system, but this cannot be allowed to infect the whole response from the Home Office. It is absolutely clear that there are individuals in the system who have suffered torture and are the victims of trafficking.”
The process should see detainees who are the victims of trafficking, torture or abuse, or who are suicidal or have other serious mental and physical health issues, identified and medically assessed to establish if they should be released.
Of the 538 reports received by the Home Office between April and June 2022, 517 related to torture, 10 suicidal intention and 11 physical health.
The ICIBI suggested that the true numbers may be higher because asylum seekers, migrants and foreign offenders taken into immigration detention were not being told about the process or how to access it, and that translation issues meant some could not communicate properly with healthcare workers.
Inspectors watched one person arriving at a detention centre who was spoken to only in English and “clearly did not understand what had been said to him”, and that no information was given about the Rule 35 process.
The report said that many detainees said they had never been asked about modern slavery, trafficking and torture, or that if they were they did not understand what the words meant.
The ICIBI also found that some detainees were revealing information during health assessments suggesting that they may be victims of modern slavery, but that doctors do not have the power to refer victims for support.
The report warned that small boat migrants were being held solely on the basis that they had crossed the English Channel illegally, which “alone cannot justify immigration detention in the face of acknowledged vulnerabilities”.
It said that Vietnamese cannabis growers were detained despite “modern slavery indicators present” and that “unrealistic timescales” for deportation were being used as a legal justification for refusing to free vulnerable people.
The government commissioned annual inspections of the kind published on Thursday in 2018, but the report said Suella Braverman had now scrapped the Home Office’s commission for checks on the Rule 35 process.
Mr Neal vowed to continue the inspections “in line with my statutory remit, and continue to bring my findings to the attention of the home secretary, parliament, and the public”.
Since the inspection was carried out, the government has rewritten the law to remove the need for similar processes in short-term holding facilities like Manston, although Rule 35 reports are still required at routine immigration detention centres including Yarl’s Wood, Harmondsworth and Derwentside.
