The Spectator

Portrait of the week: A migrant crisis in Manston, elections for Northern Ireland and Matt Hancock heads for the jungle

issue 05 November 2022

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Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, spoke in the Commons of an ‘invasion on our southern coast’ by migrants in small boats. ‘Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress,’ she said. ‘The whole country knows that is not true.’ She was reacting to a crisis at a migrant processing centre in Manston, Kent, built for 1,600 but housing 4,000. David Neal, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, called it ‘really dangerous’. He said an Afghan family had lived in a marquee there for 32 days. It was made more crowded after migrants were moved following an attack with three petrol bombs on a Border Force migrant centre in Dover by a man in a car who then killed himself. On Saturday alone, 990 migrants crossed the Channel. Of the 39,898 who had followed the route this year, about 10,000 were adult men from Albania, the Home Office said.

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