A desperate Albanian man tried to stop a coach carrying asylum seekers from leaving the immigration center in Manston. He had discovered his relatives were being held at the site after spotting a photo of his nephew on the front page of the Metro newspaper. After traveling from Oxford this afternoon, he tried to gain access to the premises to find his family. The man, understood to be named Arben Halili, then blocked a coach as he tried to leave the site. He seemed to be pointing and saying “this is my brother.” He told a Sky News reporter that he only found out his family was being held there after seeing a picture of his eight-year-old nephew on the Metro. The front page image had the image of young boys sitting behind a wire fence and peeking out from under a tarp. Arben’s nephew has reportedly been held in Manston for three weeks. To view this video, please enable JavaScript and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Children were among thousands of people forced to sleep in ill-equipped facilities with no beds, no fresh air or even toilet doors that close. Manston is designed to hold up to 1,600 people for no more than 24 hours, but on Monday there were 4,000 on site. Several hundred have moved since then. It came as Sir Keir Starmer asked Rishi Sunak to “figure out” the UK’s “broken” asylum system. The Labor leader said the government should replace Suella Braverman with a “proper home secretary” and scrap the “gimmick” of trying to deport asylum seekers in Rwanda. He added that bookies believe the Home Secretary has “a better chance of becoming the next Tory leader than she does of processing an asylum claim in a year”. The man pointed and told the driver “that’s my brother” in the video (Image: Sky News) Prime Minister Mr Sunak admitted that “not enough” asylum claims are being processed and there is a “serious and escalating problem” related to immigration, but insisted Ms Braverman was taking “significant steps” in response. He also claimed that Labour’s policy to reduce immigration is a “blank page”. Around 40,000 migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year, with Ms Braverman describing the situation on England’s south coast as an “invasion”, while also noting the “system is broken”. Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir said “He got one thing right – he finally admitted that the Tories broke the asylum system. Criminal gangs run amok, thousands cross the Channel in small boats every week, almost no claims are processed.’ Last year, just 14,000 initial asylum decisions were made, half the level six years ago. It now takes over 450 days to process a single asylum claim. Metro’s front page showed children peering through a chain-link fence at a migrant facility in Kent Almost 72% of asylum claims were granted in 2021, significantly higher than most of the previous decade, where around a third of initial decisions were grants. Edi Rama, Albania’s prime minister, launched an outspoken attack on Ms Braverman, calling on her to stop “discriminating” against Albanians to “justify policy failures”. Writing on Twitter, Mr Rama called for “mutual respect” as he hit out at the “insane” and “easy rhetoric” targeting his own citizens over the UK’s border failures. The acting home secretary has often singled out Albanian asylum seekers after their numbers crossing the Channel in small boats increased. Mr Rama claimed that 70% of the 140,000 Albanians who have moved to the UK were living in Italy and Greece and “work hard and pay tax”. He added: “We have a duty to tackle crime at home and we are doing it resolutely, working closely with others as well. Ready to work more closely with the UK, but facts are vital.” Currently, more than half of Albanian asylum seekers receive a residence permit. Meanwhile, Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said she was “extremely concerned” after reports of children sleeping on the floor and being overcrowded at the Manston processing facility in Kent. He has written a private letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman asking how many UASCs are at Manston and seeking assurances about their treatment. Contact our news team by emailing us at [email protected] For more stories like this, check out our news page.
