For migrants who make it across the English Channel, a stark detention center in a former fortress overlooking the sea often represents the bitter end of a long journey.
Recent arrivals have been bused in to the Dover Immigration Removal Centre, a former citadel which looms above the port and is surrounded by a moat, high fencing, barbed wire and security cameras.
The prison-like building houses up to 316 adult men who have either applied for asylum or had their applications rejected, although the exact numbers of daily departures and arrivals are kept secret.
Photo: EPA
As well as adults, hundreds of those making it by ferry or train hidden among freight are unaccompanied youngsters and the local authority said it is overwhelmed by the recent surge in child numbers.
The number of asylum seekers under the age of 18 in their care has almost doubled to 605 in the past three months, leaving the council with a £5.5 million (US$8.59 million) shortfall.
Compass Fostering, which finds homes for youngsters, said it had seen a five-fold increase in the numbers of unaccompanied children arriving as asylum seekers.
A year ago it was receiving 34 referrals from local authorities per month — a figure now at 140. They are mainly boys, some as young as 12.
A source close to the matter told reporters that “over 100” migrants were detained after arriving by freight train on a single day this week, compared to numbers of “zero to a handful” before the crisis escalated.
Reaching the port of Dover or the train terminal in Folkestone is the aim for migrants camped out in the French town of Calais.
An journalist in the early hours of Friday saw two migrants clinging to the roof of a truck leaving the Eurotunnel terminus, having made the journey on the freight shuttle from more than 2,000 desperate nightly bids to sneak into the undersea tunnel, and the governments on both sides pledging tougher action.
Unless they vanish off the radar, adult migrants can face lengthy periods of detention while their asylum or refugee cases are assessed — with many sent back home or to their European country of arrival.
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