SUELLA BRAVERMAN is facing legal action over the conditions at the Manston migrant detention centre in Kent, as campaigners accuse the Home Secretary of creating a “concentration camp” at the site.

Detention Action said today that an urgent pre-action letter, sent earlier this week to the Home Office by law firm Duncan Lewis on the group’s behalf, concerns a woman from a non-European country, who “was unlawfully detained by the Home Secretary at the Manston facility in egregiously defective conditions.”

The complaint also mentions “serious threats to the safety of children,” the group said.

The concerns raised include: “The routine prolongation of detention beyond statutory time limits; failure to adhere to essential safeguarding measures for children; women and children sleeping alongside [unrelated] adult men; inadequate or non-existent access to legal advice for those detained; and exposure to infectious diseases due to overcrowding and poor sanitation.”

Manston is a former RAF base where about 3,500 people are being detained for weeks at a site intended to hold 1,600 for a matter of days.

Detention Action deputy director James Wilson said: “We have taken this action out of serious concern for the welfare of thousands of people, including children, still being detained at Manston for periods far beyond legal limits.

“We are calling on the Home Secretary to declare that anyone held at Manston for more than 24 hours is being detained unlawfully [and to] allow access to the facility for organisations qualified to provide support in immigration detention settings.”

On Wednesday evening, more than 200 local people held a vigil outside the site in support of the refugees.

Vigil organiser Norman Thomas of campaign group Thanet Left said: “People have to sleep in tents, on floors, in unsanitary, unhealthy, dangerous conditions.

“This is totally illegal and amounts to keeping people in a concentration camp.

“For legal reasons, Home Secretary Suella Braverman has been unable to achieve her dream of sending refugees to Rwanda, so it seems she has decided to create a hellhole for them here in Kent.

“Braverman must be called to account for what she has done here.”

Today, the Home Secretary toured immigration centres in Kent, including Manston, where she spoke to staff about the overcrowding crisis.

She also visited the Western Jet Foil in Dover, where a petrol bomb attack took place on Sunday, but refused to talk to the press about her trip.