Tug Haven

Tug Haven was a migrant processing centre located near the Viaduct in Dover, beside a jetty in Dover Western Docks. It existed to process migrant crossings across the English Channel who had arrived on the coast of the United Kingdom. It was closed in 2022 following negative reports, with migrants being taken to Western Jet Foil and Manston arrivals and processing centre from then on.

History

As of October 2020, migrants were generally taken to two separate facilities in Dover after crossing the English Channel, one of which was Tug Haven. The centre was a fenced compound featuring several gazebos and three containers with chemical toilets. Migrants there largely hailed from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria and Eritrea. Between June and August 2020, the centre received 2,500 migrants. Inspecting the site at this time, Chief Inspector of Prisons Peter Clarke stated that the facilities were "very poorly equipped to meet their purpose and important processes had broken down", that there were no means to reduce the risk of the spread of coronavirus, and that the site "resembled a rubble-strewn building site", but that the detainees felt they had been treated positively by the staff. The Home Office said it had improved Tug Haven since the inspection.

In October 2021, an Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) report stated that Tug Haven was not suitable for children or vulnerable people, with people initially held in tents, portacabins, and a double-decker bus. Later that month, The Independent reported that over the course of July, the Home Office had spent £6,757.52 at pizza chain Domino's in five separate transactions. The largest transaction, costing £1,824, stated that the purchase was to feed migrants who had already been held for 12 hours and were expected to be held for at least another full day, while the other transactions were to keep up with the large amount of asylum seekers who had arrived at the site but who had not eaten, and to feed migrants who were staying overnight. Another report in December 2021 further concluded that the facilities were not fit for purpose, and that "despite some limited progress, detainees, including large numbers of unaccompanied children, continued (in 2021) to experience very poor treatment and conditions", finding that children, toddlers, babies and potentially vulnerable adults had all been held overnight at Tug Haven, with families with small children spending over 24 hours in tents. One 16-year-old girl spent two days at Tug Haven in wet clothes with burn injuries on her legs; these were not noticed until she was transferred to the Kent Intake Unit, likely causing life-long scars.

The site was closed in January 2022 as the result of the report published by the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in November 2021.

In July 2022, OpenDemocracy reported that the Home Office had pressured David Neal, an inspector of the site, to reword the foreword of his report into Tug Haven. The report stated that "effective safeguarding was sacrificed" and that staff had failed to record some arrivals, posing a security risk. He said that despite "significant experience of visiting detention facilities overseas," he had "never visited a detention facility in such a poor state." In his January 2022 visit he found that one person who tested positive for COVID-19 had been left to isolate in a shipping container for hours as it appeared staff had forgotten about him, and that 200 Vietnamese nationals who had arrived in small boats in 2021 had disappeared after being released into hotels with no support.

On 30 October 2022, a man drove a white SEAT vehicle to the processing facility and threw three incendiary devices, described as fireworks attached to molotov cocktail-style devices, at the facility. This caused a fire, and police arrived to cordon off the area at 11.22am, within minutes of the attack. Two people reported minor injuries. The man was later found dead at a nearby petrol station, having committed suicide. The facility remained open, however around 700 people were relocated to Manston arrivals and processing centre.

The facility had been closed by December 2022, with illegal arrivals being processed at Western Jet Foil and Manston arrivals and processing centre, and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children being sent to the Kent Intake Unit. Another IMB report was released the same month, finding that sleeping conditions at Tug Haven had been "extremely crowded", with "extremely dirty" toilets and a lack of showers and laundry facilities.