The final report of an investigation into the treatment of detainees in the Brook House immigration removal center in 2017 has found that they were subjected to torture and other forms of physical and verbal abuse. 

The Brook House Inquiry was launched three years ago after the BBC broadcast undercover footage from inside the center near Gatwick Airport in southeast England.

The report found that the safeguarding system for migrants at the facility was "dysfunctional," resulting in a "wholesale failure" to protect people.

Over a five-month-period, there were 19 incidents of breaches of international laws prohibiting torture, inhuman and degradging treatment at the facility, it said.

The Brook House detention center had a "toxic culture," the report found, fuelled by what it called the "prisonization" of the center. It said the facility was a "breeding ground for racist views" with a "culture of dehumanization of detained people."

28-day time limit

Among 33 recommendations for "necessary" changes to be made at Brook House and across the immigration detention sector, the inquiry chair Kate Eves said people should not be detained for more than 28 days, for the sake of their health and wellbeing.

About 20,000 people are currently detained in Britain's seven immigration removal centers, awaiting either deportation or permission to enter.

The UK is the only country in Europe to place no limit on how long someone can be detained, though it is generally unlawful to keep someone in detention if they cannot be removed within a reasonable time.

However, the inquiry heard that some detainees at Brook House were held for up to two years.

Never again

A Home Office spokesperson said the abuse of detainees at Brook House was unacceptable, but that the government had made "significant improvements since (2017)" and would try "to ensure these events never happen again." 

A spokesperson for the company which was then in charge of the center, G4S, said: "We were appalled when, in 2017, a number of former employees acted in a way that was contrary to our values, policies and their training and for this we are sorry."

G4S no longer runs Brook House --which is now run by Serco, or any other immigration removal centers.

Also read: UK could fit asylum seekers with electronic ankle bracelets

Expansion plans

The findings come as the government continues to prioritize closing the UK's borders to asylum seekers, with the number of migrants arriving in the UK across the Channel regularly making news headlines.

The prime minister says he wants to deter people from coming to Britain by pushing ahead with a policy of sending those who arrive by boat to Rwanda. So far the plan has failed, with a legal challenge being heard by the Supreme Court next month.

Groups opposed to the government's asylum policy say it also plans to expand the immigration detention system under the provisions of its Illegal Migration Act. "Knowing the harm it causes, the government plans a massive expansion of detention – wilfully allowing the inevitable harm to the hundreds of thousands of men, women and children it aims to indefinitely detain," said Emma Ginn, the director of Medical Justice, a group of doctors who visit and assess the treatment and needs of people in detention.

In June, professional medical associations in the UK warned that prolonged detention posed serious health risks, particularly for children.

James Wilson, the director of the human rights charity Detention Action, said that conditions in detention centers had deteriorated even further since the abuses at Brook House were made public. A caseworker with Detention Action, Mona Alya, in a video published by the group in July, described the centers as "prison-like":

"People live in very tiny cells," she said. "People are locked up in their cells for hours during the night and day, and that does something to someone's mental health."