HOME Office emails suggest the department was aware it was “breaking the law” over the detention of hundreds of asylum-seekers at Manston, Labour has said. 

The emails, obtained by the BBC, show Home Office officials raising concerns that the detention of about 450 to 500 asylum-seekers at the site in November was “no longer legal.”

They were being detained as “overflow,” amid overcrowding at the processing site in Kent, where more than 4,000 people were being held despite it having a maximum capacity of 1,600.