Staff at the controversial Manston migrant processing centre in Kent have been asked to work overtime to deal with the record number of small boat arrivals, the Guardian has learned.
The 11th-hour appeal to staff on Saturday evening to work was circulated by Management And Training Corporation (MTC), one of the Home Office’s contractors on the site near Ramsgate, due to concerns about not having enough staff on duty.
More than 1,100 migrants arrived after crossing the Channel on Saturday, the highest number recorded on a single day so far this year. The latest Home Office figures show that 1,194 people arrived in 18 boats, bringing the provisional annual total so far to 14,811.
This is 42% higher than the same point last year (10,448) and 95% up from the same point in 2023 (7,610). It is still lower than the highest daily total of 1,305 arrivals since data began in 2018, which was recorded on 3 September 2022.
A source said that staff shortages, particularly for night shifts, were a long running concern at Manston, which has been criticised for keeping people seeking refuge in the UK in squalid and unsafe conditions.
Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News, John Healey said: “Truth is, Britain’s lost control of its borders over the last five years, and the last government last year left an asylum system in chaos and record levels of immigration.”
The defence secretary said it was a “really big problem” that French police were unable to intervene to intercept boats in shallow waters and that the UK was pressing for France to put new rules into operation so it could intervene.
The record number of crossings has come after a new report revealed that the number of asylum seekers including children jailed for crossing the Channel in small boats has doubled in the last year.
The report, “I told them the truth”, from Border Criminologies and the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, includes casework information from the NGOs Humans For Rights Network, Captain Support UK and Refugee Legal Support, freedom of information data, court case observations and interviews with some of those jailed.
The research finds that since the previous government introduced the Nationality and Borders Act, which contains the new offence of “illegal arrival”, the number of people convicted of this crime has jumped from 253 between June 2022 and October 2023, to 455 between June 2022 and December 2024. Many of those prosecuted come from conflict zones including Sudan, South Sudan, Libya and Syria.
The report said approximately half of those convicted were accused of steering dinghies across the Channel. Researchers found that many had been forced to do so by smugglers or agreed because they could not afford to pay for a place on a dinghy.
Of those prosecuted since 2022, 29 told the Home Office they were children but were recorded as adults. At last 18 of them spent time in prison cells with adults. Seventeen of the 29 were later accepted to be children, while others are still undergoing the age assessment process by social workers.
Of the 29, all but one are black African, mainly from Sudan and South Sudan.
The report calls for the immediate end to criminalisation of people who have no way of claiming asylum in the UK other than travelling via dinghy or in the back of a lorry.
Yassin, 17, who was prosecuted as an adult and jailed alongside adults for boat steering, despite insisting he was a child, was confirmed to be 17 after a social services age assessment.
He said: “The time that I spend in there [Elmley prison], I wouldn’t wish it on my enemy to spend that time. Really it is bad days, bad days. People think that six months and eight days is easy, but it is not easy. You can lose your mind.”
Home Office sources said that to reduce the likelihood of children being imprisoned as adults for immigration offences, officials had updated guidance to ensure “age-disputed” cases were identified to the CPS when a referral for prosecution was made.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security. The people-smuggling gangs do not care if the vulnerable people they exploit live or die, as long as they pay – and we will stop at nothing to dismantle their business models and bring them to justice.
“We are introducing new laws which will boost our ability to identify, disrupt and dismantle criminal gangs, increase the action we are taking to tackle illegal working, and strengthen the security of our borders.”
MTC has been approached for comment.