Victims of trafficking are being wrongly sent to immigration detention centres despite police awareness that they are victims of exploitation, research by a migration charity indicates.

After police raids on nail bars, brothels and cannabis farms, some victims are still being wrongly convicted of criminal offences relating to their exploitation, and many trafficking victims are detained for removal and subsequently deported.

Because the Home Office is responsible both for identifying victims and for detaining and deporting undocumented migrants, there is a conflict of interest at the heart of the system, according to the charity Detention Action, which supports people in immigration detention.



In theory, trafficking victims should be referred by the Home Office to the national referral mechanism (NRM), the official protection system, which houses and supports victims of exploitation. Very often they are sent instead to immigration detention centres, for immigration offences, where they are not given access to advice on how to speak out about their exploitation.

In a small sample of 16 Vietnamese men whose stories suggested they had been trafficked into the UK, only nine had been referred to the NRM and only two had been accepted into it and given support, Detention Action found.

The report states that once a victim is in detention, the Home Office is primarily reponsible for making NRM referrals, but often “makes poor quality referrals which are refused, allowing it to continue to detain the person for removal”.

“Locked up in prison-like conditions, detained victims of trafficking lack access to independent specialist advice, support and representation,” the report states. “This Home Office conflict of interest, along with the limited access to independent, specialist support, advice and referrals, can compromise the fairness of the process.”



The UK’s anti-slavery commissioner, Kevin Hyland, has repeatedly described the NRM system as “a mess” and called for reform. The Detention Action report suggests referrals to the protection system should be done by independent advisers rather than the Home Office, to avoid a conflict of interest.



There are no figures available indicating how many victims of trafficking are subsequently detained and deported. “Around 30,000 men and women are detained by the Home Office in prisons and immigration removal centres (IRCs) across the UK each year. In a significant minority of cases, there are indicators that they have been trafficked to or within the UK for the purposes of exploitation,” the report states.



Seven of the 16 Vietnamese men studied by Detention Action had been convicted of cannabis cultivation; others had been picked up by immigration officers while working in a cannabis farm or nail bar. “Many described being physically or sexually assaulted by traffickers who brought them to the UK through Russia, China and France, or being forced to work long hours to pay off the debts they owed to their traffickers,” the report states.



A Home Office spokesperson said: “We note the recommendations in this report while recognising the small sample used, just 16 cases. Supporting victims of modern slavery and human trafficking is a priority for the government, which is why we have recently announced widescale reforms to the national referral mechanism, the system that identifies and supports victims in the UK.”