Riot Police Called as Migrants Armed with ‘Knives and Wood’ Stage ‘Protest’ at London Detention Centre

MIDDLESEX, UNITED KINGDOM - NOVEMBER 29: A police officer stands guard at the entrance to
Bruno Vincent/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Around 100 detained migrants staged what appeared to be an attempted armed insurrection at an immigration centre in London in the early hours of Saturday after a power outage.

In what the legacy media has dubbed a “disturbance”, a group of migrants being held at the Harmondsworth migrant detention centre near Heathrow Airport broke out of their rooms and staged a so-called protest in the courtyard with “various weaponry” after a local power outage saw the facility go dark.

According to a report from the Daily Mail, the site, which is run by the private firm Mitie, saw around 100 migrants enter the courtyard armed with knives and pieces of wood. So far, no injuries to either the staff or the migrants have been reported.

Riot police for the National Tactical Response Group (NTRG) and the Met’s Territorial Support Police, alongside fire and rescue crews, were all called to the scene, and the migrants eventually returned to their rooms.

According to information provided to The Telegraph, the migrants who are being held in the detention centre are not up to be transferred to hotels — as thousands of illegals have been — and are not up for general release. It is still not clear, however, if this was a motivating factor in the “disturbance”.

Responding to the unrest, a Home Office spokesman merely said: “There has been a power outage at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, and work is currently underway to resolve this issue.

“We are aware of a disturbance at the centre and the appropriate authorities have been notified and are on scene.

“The welfare and safety of staff and individuals detained at Harmondsworth is our key priority.”

A spokesman for Mitie added: “The Harmondsworth site of Heathrow immigration removal centre lost electrical power because of an outage in the local area.

“We are working closely with the Home Office to ensure the safety of those in our care while work is carried out on site to resolve the issue.”

The unrest at the centre is not unique in Britain’s migrant crisis. Last year, for example, a group of asylum seekers set fire to the Napier Barracks, which had been converted into a migrant camp amid the record waves of illegals crossing the English Channel. A couple of months before the fire, a gang of migrants had attempted to break down the base’s barricades.

Prior to the arson attack, migrants in the camp complained to the media about the supposedly poor conditions of the camp, which previously housed British soldiers without issue.

Complaining of the food and other conditions in the barracks, a group of Sudanese illegal migrants said that the situation had become so intolerable to their sensitivities that they wished they had “stayed in France”.

This week also saw migrants protest outside a Holiday Inn in Essex, again maligning the free food and housing they had been provided at the expense of the British taxpayer.

In 2020, a Sudanese migrant went on a stabbing spree in a Glasgow hotel, with the free food cited as a factor there as well.

During the attack, Badreddin Abadlla Adam stabbed six people, including a police officer who was critically injured. Migrants at the hotel had reportedly complained that their meals, which sometimes consisted of spaghetti or macaroni and cheese and were supposedly not “culturally appropriate” for them.

The scheme to house migrants in hotels, which began during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, is currently costing the public some £7 million per day.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.