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Channel-crossing asylum seekers: Home Office starts mass detention of arrivals, reports claim

THE Home Office is reportedly detaining Channel-crossing asylum-seekers en masse with a view to deporting them without considering their claims. 

Since early May, hundreds of people arriving to Britain in small boats have been immediately locked up, rather than housed in the community, immigration lawyers have said. 

Among them are people believed to be victims of trafficking and children wrongly classed as adults by the Home Office, the Guardian said today.

Immigration lawyers told the newspaper that Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow and Brook House at Gatwick airport are “overwhelmed” with hundreds of small-boat arrivals. 

The lawyers are said to be planning a legal challenge against the policy shift, describing it as a “potentially grave abuse of power.” 

The Morning Star understands that some residents of Napier Barracks in Kent who arrived in small boats have also been told that their claims will not be processed. 

Under new immigration rules introduced in January, the claims of asylum-seekers who are believed to have travelled through a “safe” country on the way to Britain can be deemed inadmissible. 

Last week, ministers introduced new laws to the Commons seeking to cement these rules in primary legislation.

It now appears that the Home Office has secretly begun putting some of these measures into practice by refusing to process asylum claims from individuals who entered the country via irregular routes. 

This is despite warnings from human rights groups and the United Nations refugee agency that ministers’ plans to overhaul the asylum system could breach international law.

The government has also failed to secure deals with third countries willing to accept deported asylum-seekers, meaning that those in detention have no prospect of being removed any time soon. 

Toufique Hossain, director of public law and immigration at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, told the Guardian: “They have effectively started bypassing the asylum system and saying to individuals with strong claims that their claim is weak, that they may not get an appeal and that they intend to remove them quickly.”

Previously, the Home Office housed all asylum-seekers in temporary accommodation while their claims were processed. 

The Home Office denied classing unaccompanied minors as adults, but the department was approached for further comment. 

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