UK minister under fire for calling migrants an ‘invasion’
LONDON — Britain’s interior minister faced criticism Tuesday for describing migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats as an “invasion,” days after an immigration center was attacked with firebombs.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman used the term while defending conditions at a processing center for new arrivals where some 4,000 people have been held in a facility intended for 1,600.
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Braverman referred to small-boat crossings on Monday as “the invasion of our southern coast” and said “illegal immigration is out of control.”
“Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress,” she said of migrants crossing the Channel.
Her deputy, Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick, distanced himself from her words.
“In a job like mine you have to choose your words very carefully,” he told Sky News. “And I would never demonize people coming to this country in pursuit of a better life.”
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who appointed Braverman after he took office last week, told his Cabinet on Tuesday that Britain “would always be a compassionate, welcoming country,” his spokesman said.
Braverman — a leading figure on the right wing of the governing Conservative Party who supports expelling people who enter the U.K. without authorization — did not respond to the criticism on Tuesday.
The number of asylum-seekers attempting to reach Britain by boat has increased steadily, and the system for considering applications has slowed to a crawl amid turmoil in the Conservative government, which is on its third prime minister and third home secretary this year.
Manston — a former airfield in southeast England — is supposed to be a temporary processing center where new arrivals spend 24 hours before moving on to longer-term accommodation, but refugee groups say some people have been stuck there for weeks. Some families are sleeping in tents, and there have been cases of diphtheria and scabies.
Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor said that when he visited the site recently, he saw people sleeping on floors and “lots and lots of people in a room, all squished in together.”
“For a few hours, that would be acceptable, but where people are spending long periods of time there, it just isn’t,” he told Sky News.
Critics accuse Braverman of deliberately worsening conditions at Manston by refusing to book hotel rooms for asylum seekers.
The government said “large numbers” of people were being moved out of Manston on Tuesday to relieve pressure. It said a facility some 20 miles (32 kilometers) away in the port town of Dover that was firebombed Sunday had reopened.
