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Nigerian-born Kazeem Akimwale was detained in the Brook House immigration detention centre, next to Gatwick Airport, for four months in 2024.
Akimwale had first come to England in 2009 before being sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud. However, after serving his sentence, he was ready to return to Nigeria.
Despite this, Akimwale was never deported. “The Home Office contacted me. They said I wouldn’t be allowed to leave until I paid back the money I’d fraudulently obtained”, he told Byline Times.
“But I’ve served a nine-year sentence and I’m penniless because I’m not allowed to work in the UK, so I have no idea how I’m going to pay back the money.” If he booked a trip back to Nigeria, he would be arrested at the border because he wears an electronic ankle bracelet.
Brook House is run by the British multinational company Serco, which was itself fined and prosecuted in 2013 after being caught, along with fellow private security multinational G4S, for billing non-existent prisoners with electronic ankle monitors, over-billing the Government by tens of millions of pounds. Serco was ordered to repay almost £70 million and paid an additional £23 million fine as part of its settlement to avoid criminal charges.
Despite this, the UK Government awarded Serco the £276 million contract for Brook House and Tinsley House in 2020. Serco was awarded the contract after G4S caused a national scandal at Brook House. In 2017, a BBC documentary revealed guards abusing, humiliating, and threatening migrants. An independent commission concluded in 2023 that there had been inhuman and degrading treatment. G4S lost the contract but suffered no further consequences. In 2023, the UK Government returned the “tagging” contract to G4S and Serco.
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In the UK, the entire migration sector is fully privatised. The Ministry of Justice’s budget for asylum seekers, border control, and passports, has exploded in the past three years – from £230 million in 2019-2021 to almost £8 billion in 2021-2024. In 2019, the Government awarded asylum reception contracts worth £4 billion over 10 years to just three companies: Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings Ready Homes.
This system has been highly lucrative for some. Graham King, Clearsprings’ director, made it onto the Times Rich List thanks to these contracts. The so-called “Asylum King’ reportedly earned at least £74 million from asylum contracts and is worth £750 million in total. Clearsprings’ has so far reportedly made £187m in profits, since being awarded its Government contracts, despite facing allegations of overseeing “terrible” conditions in the accommodation it uses.
Immigration centres are often heavily understaffed. The ‘Brook House Inquiry’ concluded that G4S had earned a 20% profit margin by systematically cutting back on its workforce numbers. Brook House itself had been found to be severely understaffed under G4S. Although Serco refused to answer questions about the number of employees at the centre, the inquiry found that Serco employs 75 guards – the contractual minimum – and 10 managers during the day, significantly more than G4S had.
The Human Cost of Detention
Byline Times spoke with six migrants who were held at Brook House over the past two years, and one who was held there in 2010/2011. All but Akimwale wished to remain anonymous.
One Somali man who stayed at Brook House from September 2024 to January 2025 arrived in the UK in 2002 as a 14-year-old after his family was murdered in Somalia. He was given a Rule 35 health classification, formally recognising him as a victim of torture.
The man told this paper that: “At Brook House, they told me they were going to send me back to the country where my family was murdered and where I was tortured. That had a very bad effect on my mental health; PTSD kept me awake at night.”
A judge ruled that deportation was impossible because he didn’t have a passport. “I was stuck in Brook House for four months for nothing,” he says.
Immigration detention in the UK has no legal limit. People can be held indefinitely, and some are held for years without the prospect of deportation.
A man from Ghana who served as a soldier for the British army, including tours in Afghanistan, was given a one-year prison sentence for “lending” his passport to help an asylum-seeking friend find work. He was held at Brook House from July to November 2024. During his detention, another French man died, allegedly of a drug overdose.
“There were so many drugs in Brook House” the man from Ghana told Byline Times.
“I got to know the guards, and they told me they worked a lot of overtime because they couldn’t make ends meet. So some guards earned extra money by smuggling drugs into Brook House, especially the synthetic weed called ‘Spice.’ The drugs come in through the kitchen. That guard asked me if I wanted to earn some extra money, but I don’t do drugs.”
One man from Poland spent over a year in Brook House, from July 2023 to September 2024.
“The first night in Brook House, I discovered my cellmate was brewing 15 litres of vodka in his cell. All the other residents were using spice; you could smell it in the building” he says.
In July 2024, he saw three Romanian asylum seekers jump on an internal anti-suicide net in protest because they wanted to return home after a year in Brook House. “Two men crawled off the net, but one stayed put. Serco staff then pepper-sprayed him.” Serco denies that pepper spray is used in Brook House. Six out of seven migrants who spoke to Byline Times witnessed migrants jumping on the anti-suicide net. A spokesperson said “There have been a small number of occasions where residents have jumped on the safety netting. They do this for many different reasons, mainly to avoid removals.”
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More than half of the detainees at Brook House are not removed, but released back into society, according to the Independent Monitoring Board. Is this ineffective Government policy? Or are migrants being deliberately detained indefinitely and then released?
Professor Mary Bosworth, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University, believes the latter. She was appointed as an expert in the Brook House Inquiry and is the author of the recently published book “Supply Chain Justice”.
“Migrants are managed throughout the entire process as if they were packages: escort, transport, detention, and deportation. Everything has to be efficient” she explains.
In her book, Bosworth discusses the “logistification” of the migration sector. The fully privatised migration sector in the UK is “a self-perpetuating commercial project where the idea is to keep migrants in circulation indefinitely.”
A Ghanaian man held at Brook House from March to July 2024 understands what Bosworth means. “During my stay, I saw five or six people decide to book their own return flights because Serco and the Home Office were taking far too long. Brook House is a ‘money machine,’ so they have a vested interest in you staying, not leaving.”
Another Ghanaian man knew he couldn’t be deported when they sent him to Brook House in July 2024, because he had permanent residency. “They don’t deport many people; it’s about the money. They prefer to circulate us (migrants) around the country because they profit from that,” he belives.
Byline Times spoke with three former Serco employees who all three said the drug spice is freely available at the centre. A former female employee who worked there from September 2024 to April 2025 said she heard a colleague call a Ghanaian migrant a “black monkey.” A Serco representative said they had no record of this incident.
The former employee who spoke to this paper also witnessed Serco guards beating up an Albanian migrant at the end of 2024. “They accused him of having weed. The migrant responded: ‘Weed? You bring that in here.’ Then they started beating him up, and he was subsequently placed in solitary confinement. The manager asked me why I wanted to give the detainees first-class treatment when I asked him why he allowed this violence.” A Serco spokesperson said: “Without an exact date of an alleged incident, we cannot investigate and respond.”
All three former employees confirmed that employees smuggle drugs into the building. In 2024, a French migrant died at Brook House, allegedly from a Spice overdose. Serco denies both the inflow of drugs and the cause of death: “We have a robust procedure in place to stop illegal substances entering Brook House”, a spokesperson said.
The Guardian reported at the time that Serco had distributed notes among the residents, following the death, warning them of the dangers of drugs.
The NGO Medical Justice published a report about Brook House in 2024 titled “If He Dies, He Dies.” They interviewed 66 migrants held in the centre. Of these, 84% had a history of torture or human trafficking, and 95% had a mental health condition. The suicide risk was extremely high: 74% had suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide, and 17 people self-harmed. The latest suicide attempt took place in May 2025.
Serco was recently questioned by MPs about profit margins for its asylum accommodation contracts. A Serco spokesperson reported that they make a 7% profit on these contracts. How much profit Serco makes from the Brook House contract is unclear. The company and the Government refuse to release that information. However, it is likely lower than the 20% that predecessor G4S made. Although the profit margins are smaller, it does not appear that Serco has broken the previous culture. In 2023, an Albanian man died by suicide, and in 2024, a French man allegedly died from a Spice overdose.
The Home Office, failed to answer any specific questions, but said in a statement that: “It is vital that detention and removals are carried out with dignity and respect, and we continue to take robust action to improve conditions and safeguards in immigration detention facilities.”
This article was developed with the support of Journalismfund Europe
