Asylum seekers have described how they were taken from a processing centre in Kent and left in central London without accommodation, appropriate clothing or money.
A young man from Afghanistan told The Guardian he was among a group of 11 people dropped on the street outside Victoria Station on Tuesday evening.
He told the paper he asked a bus driver, who had picked the group up from the overcrowded Manston immigration holding centre then dropped them off in the capital, where they should go.
“I thought there was going to be a hotel for us. He said: ‘Go anywhere you want to go, it’s not my responsibility,’” said the man, who wished to remain anonymous.
“I told the driver I don’t have any address or any relatives. He said: ‘I can’t do anything for you.’”
The man said he had told Home Office staff during an earlier interview that he had no relatives or acquaintances in the country.
“They asked me if I had any friends or family and I replied I had no one in England,” he said.
A second asylum seeker, also from Afghanistan and speaking on condition of anonymity, told the paper he was among a group of 15 people taken from Manston on a bus and dropped in central London on Saturday evening.
“I was shocked to be left without help. I was cold. I was hungry and I was wondering how to sort it out,” he said, adding that the group had planned to spend the night in Victoria coach station.
The 20-year-old ex-police officer, who worked with international forces in his home country before fleeing when his parents were killed by the Taliban in 2021, was later able to get a bystander to help him contact a friend whose floor he was able to sleep on.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Home Secretary has taken urgent decisions to alleviate issues at Manston using all the legal powers available and sourcing alternative accommodation.
“The welfare of those in our care is of the utmost importance and asylum seekers are only released from Manston when they have assured us that they have accommodation to go to – to suggest otherwise is wrong and misleading.”
The Home Secretary toured immigration centres on Thursday while battling to grip the migrant crisis amid threats of legal action, sexual assault allegations at a hotel housing asylum seekers and international criticism of her use of language.
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