‘Brook House is a Money Machine’
Inside the Human Cost of the UK’s Abuse-Filled Privatised Immigration Detention System
Private contractors are taking hundreds of millions of pounds from a system critics believe incentivises maximising profits by keeping people trapped in it. Ruth Hopkins reports
Photo: Victoria Jones/PA
Nigerian-born Kazeem Akimwale was detained in Brook House immigration removal centre, next to Gatwick Airport, for four months in 2024.
He came to the UK in 2009, and was later sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud. After serving his time, he was ready to return to Nigeria. But Akimwale was never deported.
He told Byline Times that the Home Office told him he would not be allowed to return there until he had “paid back” the money he had fraudulently obtained in the UK.