Migrants ‘are left at London Victoria station without accommodation after being taken out of crisis-hit Manston processing centre’
- Group of 11 men understood to have been driven from Kent to London yesterday
- Charity volunteers said that many were in flip-flops and without winter coats
- Police also called to reports of a group of asylum seekers looking for assistance
Migrants were reportedly left at London Victoria station without accommodation after being taken out of the processing centre at Manston.
The group of 11 men are understood to have been driven from Kent to London yesterday as part of a larger group.
Volunteers from the Under One Sky homelessness charity, who provided them with food and clothes, told The Guardian that many were in flip-flops and without winter coats.
Volunteer Danial Abbas: ‘They were stressed, disturbed and completely disoriented. They were also very hungry.’
A British Transport Police spokesman said officers responded to reports of a group of asylum seekers ‘looking for assistance’ at Victoria station at 10.33pm on Tuesday.
The group of 11 men (pictured) are understood to have been driven from Kent to London yesterday as part of a larger group
A statement added: ‘Officers engaged and liaised with charity partners, rail staff, and government colleagues to help them find accommodation for the evening.’
It comes as hundreds of people are thought to have been moved out of the Manston processing centre – a disused airfield site near Ramsgate – amid concerns it had become dangerously overcrowded.
Raising a point of order in the Commons on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael said: ‘On Monday the Home Secretary said: “What I have refused to do is to prematurely release thousands of people into local communities without having anywhere for them to stay.”
Around 40 migrants were transported out of Manston, the overcrowded processing centre yesterday
‘It is reported today that last night exactly that happened. A bus full of detainees was taken from Manston to Victoria Station, where they were then left abandoned and apparently one was left to sleep rough overnight.
‘That surely contradicts what the Home Secretary told the House. She has something to answer.
‘It would be very useful for the House to know whether or not she intends to come here and explain herself or whether yet again she has to be brought.’