Investigation Exposing the Violations That Accompany the Deportations of Immigrants From UK

The Guardian newspaper published an investigation revealing a shocking violation that accompany the deportations of immigrants from the UK. The newspaper highlighted that contractors with the British Home Office paid for sex while deporting people out of the Kingdom.

The contractors work for Meta, which has signed a contract to manage deportations of immigrants from Britain since May 2018.

The whistleblowers disclosed to The Guardian that their colleagues has regularly paid sex workers on overnight stopovers over a period of 10 years after accompanying migrants on flights from the UK.

Human rights organizations criticized the UK Home Office for "allowing taxpayers' hard-earned money to be used for predatory sex tourism.

An investigation has been launched after The Guardian’s allegations. Home Office permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft has raised concerns about the allegations with firm Mitie, which has signed a contract to manage deportations since May 2018.

Mitie said it is conducting a full investigation into the allegations, and has not yet found any evidence of such behavior since the contract was signed.

 

Disturbing Violations

The whistleblower said dozens of their colleagues had been engaged in paid sex work for a decade. They claimed this happened in cities including Nairobi in Kenya, Johannesburg in South Africa, Hanoi in Vietnam, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Bucharest in Romania.

One of the contractors at the Ministry of the Interior said they were shocked by what they saw while escorting people outside: “At one job, two of us sat in the bar while three team members went with prostitutes…One of them had a phone he called his little black book, specifically for jobs in abroad to arrange these contacts.”

Another contractor explained that the money that Home Office contractors pay to use sex workers while they are being deported immigrants abroad goes much further than in the UK. But they say the taxpayer money is being used to take us to these places where he pays for sex.

A third contractor told the Guardian: “This practice among Home Office contractors has lasted for as long as I can remember. A lot of hotels, especially in places like Nairobi, are full of prostitutes, and they are cheap. It's something they do because it's there, it's available."

Stephen Kinnock, immigration spokesman for the opposition Labor Party, described the reports as deeply disturbing and called on the Home Office to investigate the allegations immediately.

Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, said: “The deportation industry is wasting millions of British taxpayer pounds, tearing loving families apart and leaving thousands of British children to grow up in poverty. It is rubbing salt in the wound when we know that the Interior Ministry contractors may have engaged in sex tourism while they were abroad with our hard-earned money.”

Steve Valdez Symonds, Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights at Amnesty International UK, said the recent allegations had drawn attention to the need for the Home Office to critically reassess its use of private contractors to carry out immigration functions.

 

Deportation Scandal

In April 14, the BBC reported that a number of politicians and organizations in the UK criticized the government's plan to send a number of asylum seekers to Rwanda, describing it as "cruel."

The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had revealed that the plan would be limited to the deportation of males who arrive in the British Isles alone.

Johnson said the program, which will cost 120 million pounds, would “save” many lives and will prevent immigrants from the smugglers' abuses.

Refugee organizations have criticized the plan, questioning its cost and impact, and warning about Rwanda's record on human rights issues.

Johnson said there was a need to stand up to "despicable smugglers" and prevent them from turning the ocean into a watery graveyard for refugees, through a plan aimed at hindering their work.

"Our humanity may be limitless, but our ability to help others is not. We cannot ask the British taxpayer to bear the costs of someone who wants to come to live here without limits," he added.

He added that those who arrive in Britain for asylum will not be received for accommodation in hotels, but will be placed in detention centers.

 

Criminalizing Immigrants

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has called on the UK government and lawmakers to ensure that the proposed Citizenship and Borders Bill avoids undermining human rights protections for refugees and other migrants.

Among other provisions, the Citizenship and Borders Bill proposed treating asylum seekers differently depending on how they arrived in the UK, when they applied for asylum, how they traveled, and their connections to so-called safe third countries.

The bill also proposed criminalizing illegal entry, as well as criminalizing the facilitation of irregular immigration, and empowering authorities to strip UK citizens of their citizenship without warning. It also proposed the establishment of external reception centers for asylum seekers.

The proposed law originated in the House of Commons, and was under consideration by the House of Lords, which recently rejected, by large margins, its main rulings on these issues of concern, and introduced a host of additional amendments, bringing the bill into better compliance with international standards.

Michelle Bachelet said: “The House of Lords’ blatant rejection of the main provisions of the Bill should send a compelling signal to the UK Government that it does require significant amendments. I urge the Government and members of the House of Commons to act on this signal and bring the proposed legislation into line with international human rights law and the 1951 Refugee Convention."

Ms. Bachelet warned that the bill, if not amended, would result in a law that penalizes people who enter the UK by irregular means, as if they were criminals, in contravention of international law and standards. It will separate asylum seekers who arrive in the UK into two tiers, in violation to the right of an individual assessment of their own protection needs.