Asylum seekers have been filmed partying and fighting inside Britain’s biggest asylum seeker centre.
In the shocking footage a group of men can be seen dancing and singing around in a recreation area, while other footage shows a fight breaking out between some of the 1,2000 small-boat migrants housed at former RAF Wethersfield in Essex.
The Kurdish men can be seen dancing in a disco area with flashing lights and a sound system.
A security guard appears to be filming the group while other groups of men are mulling around and playing pool.
A third segment shows a brawl breaking out between some of the migrants in a common area, with men throwing trays at each other while security staff struggle to separate the combatants.
One X poster replied: ‘And these men are roaming our streets and people wonder why we don’t feel safe.’
The video has emerged just a day after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans for the toughest asylum crackdown in years.
The footage is believed to have been filmed just before Labour took power in July last year but has only just surfaced.
The Kurdish men can be seen dancing in a disco area with flashing lights and a sound system
Home Office sources said it would not have provided the music equipment and suggested the videos were taken before the general election.
Local residents in the nearby Wethersfield village were opposed to the former RAF base being turned into a migrant centre – and are vehemently against the site being expanded.
At last year’s General Election Sir Keir had said he would close the venue and stop housing asylum seekers on disused military sites.
Then in July, he announced that it would be expanded, adding 445 new places at the centre.
Celia Harris, 76, and her husband Robert, 77, live close enough to the camp to hear conversations from behind the fence from their garden.
Celia, a retired cleaner, told the Mail in July: ‘We did all the protests against it. We did not feel then and still do not feel that it’s an appropriate place.
‘They’ve got to stop them coming in the first place. We’re not racist. But why is taxpayers’ money being spent on them when our winter fuel allowance has been stopped?’
Other reports recently showed that life in the camp is not always so comfortable. Footage shot has shown giant rats, leaking toilets and flooded hallways strewn with rubbish.
Video and photos reveal squalid conditions at the camp which accommodates men who arrived on small boats.
A security guard working at the camp, which is run by Clearsprings Ready Homes on behalf of the Home Office, told the iPaper there were ‘rats as big as cats’, with the problem worsening after capacity was increased earlier this year.
A brawl broke out between some of the migrants in a common area, with men throwing trays at each other
They said: ‘They are literally coming into your buildings. They’re in the rafters. They were huge. You’d see rats in rubbish bins that gave birth in there.
‘We got so used to that it just became the norm.’
Before last year’s general election, Sir Keir Starmer said former MoD Police base Wethersfield needed to close.
But the Government is now extending its use as well as increasing the number of military bases to house asylum seekers in order to slash the cost of hotels.
Campaigners have warned that residents who have endured torture, trafficking and mental health problems should not be held at Wethersfield.
The Helen Bamber Foundation has described the base as an ‘open prison camp’ that has caused ‘irreparable and profound harm’.
