Immigration detainees are being held in conditions more appropriate to a top-security jail and are banned from possessing such items as nail clippers and audio leads, according to a report published today.
Migrants who refuse to leave Harmondsworth immigration removal centre in West London to board flights out of Britain are routinely punished. Many also fear being bullied by staff and detainees placed in temporary confinement are often strip-searched, the report says.
Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, said that her report on the centre, which is run by United Kingdom Detention Services, a private security company, was the poorest to be issued for an immigration removal centre in England and Wales.
Ms Owers found that temporary solitary confinement had been authorised 129 times between January and July, when she carried out her inspection.