This week the first migrants could be flown out of Britain under the ‘one in, one out’ deportation scheme. They talk about their fears and incomprehension
“W
e can’t eat. We can’t sleep. We have been locked up in this place for more than a month. Some people expect to be forced on to a plane to France today. Nobody wants to go. For us, this is a disaster.”
The man speaking, Fessahaye, is an asylum seeker from Eritrea who fled indefinite military conscription in his home country, and walked through the Sahara before being tortured and enslaved in Libya. He eventually crossed the Mediterranean and reached Europe. From France he travelled to the UK in a small boat.
“This place” is Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick airport. It is one of two centres, along with Harmondsworth, near Heathrow, where an estimated 92 people who recently arrived on small boats have been detained in preparation for removal to France in a new deal hailed by the prime minister as a development that will finally “turn the tables” on the high number of asylum seekers arriving here in dinghies.
