Asylum Seekers Claim to be Tricked and Humiliated by UK Border Agency

Louis Perrett, an asylum seeker worker, has now claimed that she was advised at the UK Border Agency office in Cardiff to refuse difficult asylum claims. These claims suggest that the UK Border Agency tricked, mistreated and humiliated asylum seekers. The staff working at the UK Border Agency are now to be investigated in parliament.

Keith Vaz, the home affairs select committee chairman, has called for an investigation following the allegations that officials at one of the government's major centers for processing asylum seekers' claims takes pride in refusing applications. He pointed out that this is not what the staff workers are there for.

Louise Perrett , who worked as a cases owner at the Border Agency office in Cardiff for three and a half months last summer, claims that the staff kept a stuffed gorilla, which was placed as a badge of shame on the desk of any officer who approved an asylum application. Perrett, age 29, also alleges that one official boasted to her that he tested the claims of boys from African countries who said they had been forcibly conscripted as child soldiers by making them lie down on the floor and demonstrate how they shot at people in the bushes. Others said that a method to determine the authenticity of an asylum seeker's claiming to be from North Korea was to ask if the person ate chop suey.

Louis Perrett went on to say that she was given the power to make legally binding decisions on whether an asylum seeker was granted or refused asylum after just five weeks of training. She also had the power to detain individuals and families for up to 28 days.