During a power outage, detainees armed with various weapons sparked a disturbance at a London immigration removal center.
According to the Home Office, no one was wounded during the incident at the Harmondsworth detention center in West London.
It is believed that several armed detainees fled their cells and entered the courtyard of the immigration detention center.
On Saturday early morning, there was a power outage at the location.
The power was still down at the west London location shortly before 0900 GMT, and the Home Office reported that efforts were underway to rectify the situation.
According to the administration, no detainees had left the facility, and those involved had now returned to their quarters.
The police and the British Prison Service arrived at the scene. The Metropolitan Police stated that officers responded to the incident at 07:45 and remained on the scene.
The West Drayton detention center near Heathrow Airport houses hundreds of males, including adult male asylum seekers, foreign criminals awaiting deportation, and individuals who are illegally present in the United Kingdom.
This week, the government has been widely criticized for its handling of overpopulation at a Kent immigration center.
The Manston processing center came under scrutiny following reports that migrants, including families, were unlawfully detained for four weeks.
The camp, which was intended to hold people for no more than 24 hours, was designed to hold 1,600 migrants at a time, but Home Office minister Chris Philp reported that there were more than 4,000 migrants there on Monday.
Following an inspection last year, a government assessment of the Harmondsworth immigration removal center found several issues, including living conditions “below acceptable standards.”
The chief prison inspector noted dirty cell toilets, bug infestations, and deteriorating common showers.
Concerns were also expressed over the high vulnerability of detainees, the prolonged detention of those deemed in danger of harm, and the practice of locking detainees in their cells during lunch and nighttime.
The immigration removal center began in 2000 and has a capacity of around 670 individuals. It is administered by Mitie Care and Custody.
Chris Philp stated on Friday, in response to criticism of the government’s handling of the situation at the Manston site in Kent, that conditions had “dramatically improved.”
Mr. Philp, the local representative, confirmed that errors had been made when two groups of refugees from the Manston center were abandoned in London.
He told that both groups told immigration officials that they had addresses to go to, but “that proved out to be false”
“I don’t know how that misunderstanding developed, perhaps something was lost in translation, but it’s evident that they’ve all been taken care of,” he said.
In an interview with the Times on Saturday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described the difficulty of migrants accessing the United Kingdom over the English Channel as “severe and unprecedented.”
“There is no simple, overnight solution to this problem,” he stated.
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