Migrants removed to hotels from Manston's overcrowded processing centre

Breaking news - Suella Braverman announced that officials were buying up 1,800 “additional hotel bed spaces” in 13 “new hotels” to alleviate the overcrowding at a centre that is only supposed to process migrants in 48 hours, not keep them there for weeks at a time. It is claimed that some children and their families had been there for a month.

The exodus began on Monday night. Coaches carrying migrants started to leave the main processing centre for Channel asylum seekers, for dispersal to hotels and boarding houses across the UK.

The 12ft-high metal gates at the former Manston RAF airfield – now Britain’s most notorious detention centre – swung open and out drove coaches taking mainly women and children to new, safer surroundings.

Their nightmare ordeal was ending for them, ironically enough, on Halloween.

Officials had hastily put in place plans to shift 2,400 migrants from the Kent facility over the next fortnight in an attempt to rapidly reduce dangerous overcrowding.