The British government detained over 850 people between the years of 2012 and 2017, some of which were legally living in the United Kingdom. According to the newspaper The Guardian, as a result, authorities were forced to pay over £21 million pounds in reparations.
The numbers published show that there have been 171 cases of unfair immigration detention in 2015-16, causing the payment of reparations that totalized £ 4,1 million, and 143 cases in 2016-17, adding up to £ 3,3 million. Between 2012 and 2015, a total of £ 13,8 milllion has been paid to over 550 people after a period of illegal immigration detaining.
The document revealed by the newspaper also shows that bonuses have been paid to senior and junior officers from the Home Office, for the accomplishment of forced removal targets from the country. The numbers of detentions do not provide details of who was mistakenly detained, although it is possible that these numbers include some individuals form Windrush that were wrongly sent to immigrant removal centres or prisons before deportation.
There are known cases of individuals from Windrush that were almost deported, like Anthony Brian, who was sent to an immigrant detention centre last December and booked by the Home Office a flight back to Jamaica, a country he had not visited since he was 8 years old. A last-minute intervention by an immigration lawyer got his seat in the flight cancelled and he was released from detention.
The Home Office secretary, Sajid Javid, has promised to provide numbers on how many people from Windrush were wrongly detained; he has already acknowledged that 63 people from Windrush have been deported by mistake.