"Brook House is a 'money machine,' so they have a vested interest in you staying, not leaving." This is how a Ghanaian man describes his experience at the immigration removal centre run by British private security multinational Serco, where he was held from March to July 2024.
During his stay, he watched five or six fellow detainees give up waiting for deportation and book their own return flights. "Serco and the Home Office were taking far too long."
His assessment is supported by stark statistics: more than half of Brook House detainees are released back into society rather than deported, according to the Independent Monitoring Board.
The question arises: is this ineffective government policy, or are migrants being deliberately circulated indefinitely?
Mary Bosworth, professor of criminology at Oxford University, believes the latter. Appointed as an expert to the Brook House Inquiry and author of the recently published book "Supply Chain Justice", Bosworth argues that the UK migration sector is "a self-perpetuating commercial project where the idea is to keep migrants in circulation indefinitely.”
The fully privatised migration sector in the UK, she explains, might seem chaotic but actually there is a highly efficient supply chain: “Migrants are managed throughout the entire process as if they were packages: escort, transport, detention, and deportation. Everything has to be efficient."
Brook House, run by British multinational Serco and located next to Gatwick Airport, operates under a £276m contract awarded in 2020
The numbers support Bosworth's analysis. In the UK, the entire migration sector is fully privatised.
In 2019, approximately 35.000 asylum seekers arrived in the UK; by 2024, the number was around 108.000, so the influx of asylum seekers to the UK tripled during those years.
The government budgets saw a much more explosive growth.
The ministry of justice's budget for asylum seekers, border control, and passports has exploded from £230m [€261m] in 2019-2021 to almost £8bn in 2021-2024—a 35-fold increase.
In 2019, the government awarded asylum reception contracts worth £4bn over 10 years to just three companies: Serco, Mears, and Clearsprings Ready Homes.
Graham King, Clearsprings' director, made it onto the Times Rich List thanks to these contracts.
The 'asylum King' reportedly earned £74m from asylum seekers and is worth £750m in total.
Clearsprings' net profit increased 413-fold to £60m, an investigation by NGO Refugee Action revealed.
Brook House itself, run by British multinational Serco and located next to Gatwick Airport, operates under a £276m contract awarded in 2020.
The Brook House Inquiry concluded that Serco's predecessor, G4S, earned a 20 percent profit margin by systematically cutting labour—the facility was severely understaffed.
Although Serco refused to answer questions about staffing levels, the inquiry found Serco employs 75 guards — the contractual minimum — and 10 managers during the day.
The irony of the privatised system is stark: Serco itself has a criminal record.
In 2013, Serco and fellow private security multinational G4S were caught billing the government for monitoring non-existent prisoners with electronic ankle monitors, overbilling by millions. Serco repaid £70m and paid an additional £23m fine to avoid prosecution.
Yet despite this fraud conviction, the British government awarded Serco the Brook House contract in 2020.
The contract came after G4S caused a national scandal when a 2017 BBC documentary revealed guards abusing, humiliating, and threatening migrants.
An independent inquiry concluded in 2023 that there had been inhuman and degrading treatment. G4S lost the contract but suffered no further consequences—and in 2023, the British government returned the "tagging" contract to both G4S and Serco.
EUobserver spoke with six migrants held at Brook House over the past two years, and one detained there in 2010/2011. All but one wished to remain anonymous.
Nigerian Kazeem Akimwale spent four months detained in Brook House in 2024 despite his willingness to return to Nigeria after serving a nine-year prison sentence for fraud.
"The Home Office contacted me. They said I wouldn't be allowed to leave until I paid back the money I'd fraudulently obtained. 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," Akimwale explains.
An electronic ankle bracelet means he would be arrested at the border if he tried to book his own flight home.
A Somali man stayed at Brook House from September 2024 to January 2025. He arrived in the UK in 2002 aged 14, after his family was murdered in Somalia. He received a Rule 35 health classification, formally recognising him as a torture victim.
"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," he says. A judge ruled deportation impossible because he lacked a passport. "I was stuck in Brook House for four months for nothing."
Immigration detention in the UK has no legal limit. People can be held indefinitely, and some remain detained for years without the prospect of deportation.
Another Ghanaian man knew deportation was impossible when sent to Brook House in July 2024 — he had permanent residency. "They don't deport many people; it's about the money. They prefer to circulate us around the country because they profit from that."
"Brook House is the only detention centre that I ever did research in where I felt unsafe. The physical design of the building contributes to that, there's lots of little rooms where there's no line of sight. It is built like a Category B prison."
A Ghanaian man who served as a British Army soldier, including tours in Afghanistan, received 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, a French man died, allegedly from a drug overdose.
"There were so many drugs in Brook House. 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," the former soldier explains.
A Polish man 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." In July 2024, he witnessed three Romanian asylum seekers jump onto the internal anti-suicide net in protest after a year detained.
"Two men crawled off the net, but one stayed put. Serco staff then pepper-sprayed him." Serco denies is uses pepper spray in Brookhouse. Six out of seven migrants interviewed witnessed people jumping on the net.
Serco: “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.”
Three former Serco employees spoke to EUobserver. All confirmed that spice is freely available inside Brook House.
A female employee who worked from September 2024 to April 2025 heard a colleague call a Ghanaian migrant a "black monkey."
She reported this to her manager, but Serco claims it has no records of the incident. The former employee also claims she witnessed Serco guards beating 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." Serco responded: “Without an exact date of the alleged incident, we cannot investigate and respond.”
All three former employees confirmed that staff members smuggle drugs into the building. In 2024, a French migrant died at Brook House, allegedly from a spice overdose.
Serco denies both drug inflow and the cause of death, stating: "We have robust procedures in place to stop illegal substances entering Brook House." However, The Guardian reported that Serco distributed notes warning residents about drug dangers following the French man’s death.
Bosworth's research supports these accounts. "Brook House has always been really bad," she notes.
"Brook House is the only detention centre that I ever did research in where I felt unsafe. The physical design of the building contributes to that, there's lots of little rooms where there's no line of sight. It is built like a Category B prison. The housing units are not all open at any given moment because in high-security prisons, you would only be allowed out a few hours a day."
NGO Medical Justice published a 2024 report titled "If He Dies, He Dies" based on interviews with 66 Brook House detainees.
Of these, 84 percent had histories of torture or human trafficking, and 95 percent had mental health conditions.
The suicide risk was extremely high: 74 percent had suicidal thoughts or attempted suicide, and 17 people self-harmed. The latest suicide attempt occurred in May 2025.
On profit margins, professor Bosworth is clear about the dynamics: "You can make a profit margin in a detention centre if you don't employ enough staff."
When questioned in the UK Parliament about asylum accommodation contracts, Serco reported seven percent profit margins.
How much Serco makes from Brook House specifically remains unclear — the company and government refuse to disclose this information. It's likely lower than G4S's 20 percent margin achieved through severe understaffing.
Bosworth argues privatisation fundamentally compromises care: "I think the lure of making profit is always going to compromise the ability to offer safe and dignified treatment."
She adds: "Immigration detention centres are not necessary. The vast majority of people who live in any country with undocumented status, even under deportation orders, are not detained."
The Home Office refused to answer specific questions, stating only: "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 story is part of a series of investigations conducted by Dutch investigative collective Spit and Italian publication Altreconomia into Europe's privatised migration market across six countries: Italy, Albania, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK, and Greece.
This investigation was developed with the support of the EU Journalismfund.
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Ruth Hopkins is an award-winning investigative journalist. She is based in the UK but has lived and worked in South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland and Albania. She is also a member of Onderzoekscollectief Spit.
Ruth Hopkins is an award-winning investigative journalist. She is based in the UK but has lived and worked in South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland and Albania. She is also a member of Onderzoekscollectief Spit.