Home Office urged to be transparent about deaths of asylum seekers in its care

Human rights and refugee campaigners are calling on the Home Office to be transparent about the numbers of asylum seekers who die in its care by publishing quarterly data as other government departments do.The only way to obtain data about asylum seeker deaths is via freedom of information (FoI) requests to the Home Office, which officials do not always comply with. However, the NHS produces regular figures about deaths in hospitals and the Ministry of Justice does so with deaths in custody.Fifty-one people died in Home Office-provided asylum accommodation in 2024, an increase of 11 on the previous year and a more than twelvefold rise on 2019 when four people died, according to FoI data.The department initially claimed that only 30 people had died during that year, but had to apologise after it emerged there were 21 additional deaths.Deaths in recent years include those of Leonard Farruku from Albania, who died on the Bibby Stockholm barge in December 2023; Mehrab Omrani from Iran, who is thought to have lain dead for four months in Home Office accommodation before his body was discovered in March 2024; and Hussein Haseeb Ahmed, a Kurdish Iraqi man who died at Manston processing centre in Kent after contracting diphtheria in November 2022.An amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 proposed publishing this data but was not passed. The investigative journalism unit Liberty Investigates argued in an appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that the Home Office should make these deaths public but was unsuccessful.The ICO agreed with the Home Office, which said that “preventing potential harassment or violence against vulnerable individuals and staff would outweigh any countervailing interests in transparency”.The Home Office said giving the names of those who died could assist in “indirectly identifying the relatives of deceased individuals and/or the accommodation providers. This could expose relatives of the deceased to harassment or violence, particularly in light of recent incidents in August 2024 where asylum locations were targeted.”Officials added: “This targeting of asylum locations could also expose the staff who work there to harassment or violence. Therefore it is our view that disclosure of the requested information would lead to endangerment.”The charity Asylum Matters is coordinating a campaign calling for both deaths of asylum seekers in the care of the Home Office and those who die trying to cross the Channel to be published.Louise Calvey, the executive director at Asylum Matters, said: “People are dying in our asylum system. They’re dying at our borders, yes, but they’re also dying in camps, hotels, and other privately run, profit-driven Home Office funded accommodation. People are dying by suicide, dying of infectious disease, dying avoidable deaths. What we know for certain is that lives are being lost – but what we don’t know is how many.“It’s an utterly shameful outlier: when people die in government care in other settings, such as the prison system, there’s a duty to report and track that data. Not tracking the figures in the asylum system makes it impossible to take effective action to reduce these tragedies – and it sends the appalling message that the deaths of people seeking sanctuary don’t matter.”The Home Office previously revealed it did not routinely inform family members when asylum seekers died in its care and did not want to supply details of these deaths publicly in case it upset them and “endangers their mental health”.A department spokesperson said:“Our thoughts and sympathies are with the families and friends of any asylum seeker or migrant who has died. We have taken immediate action to restart asylum processing and robust measures are in place to prioritise the safety of anyone in asylum accommodation. Our Border Security Act will also make it an offence to endanger another life during perilous small boat crossings, including a sentence of up to five years in prison.”