CALAIS, France: On the eve of the demolition of the Calais “Jungle” camp, French officials on Sunday handed out flyers in several languages notifying migrants of the camp’s imminent closure and urging them to abandon their dreams of reaching Britain.
Less than 24 hours before the operation to raze the squalid settlement near Calais port was due to start some migrants, however, were still clinging to hopes of a new life across the Channel.
“We have yet to convince some people to accept accommodation and give up their dream of Britain. That’s the hardest part,” Didier Leschi, head of the French immigration office OFII told AFP.
Some Afghans have vowed not to budge — or to make their own way back to Calais from the regional shelter to which they are sent.
“They’ll have to force us to leave. We want to go to Britain,” Karhazi, an Afghan, said.
Others welcomed the move.
“You never know. The demolition may ultimately be a good thing,” said Faisal Al-Ajab, a 39-year-old Sudanese man, who has already applied for asylum in France and has been living in the Jungle while waiting for housing.
“The officials say tomorrow is the beginning of something better. Let’s hope this is true,” Ajab, who used to make his living as an interior decorator, said as he trimmed his friend’s beard for the move.
The camp’s demolition and the resettlement of its estimated 6,000-8,000 residents in refugee shelters around the country is due to get underway on Monday morning.
Hammoudi, a 22-year-old from Aleppo, Syria, told AFP that despite a semblance of normality in parts of the camp, “everyone knows it’s over.”
“Today is the last day of the Jungle,” he said.
Officials and aid workers distributed the flyers on Sunday instructing migrants in text and pictures to show up at a hangar near the camp from 8:00 am (0600 GMT) with their luggage.
From there the migrants — mostly Afghans, Sudanese and Eritrean males — will be taken by bus to temporary shelters, where they can seek asylum.
Some 145 buses will be deployed over the course of the three-day move.
But most of the migrants who traveled thousands of miles to Calais did so in the hope of stowing away on a lorry heading to Britain, where they have contacts and believe their job prospects are better.
Pascal Brice, head of the Ofpra asylum agency, said his staff were trying to convince migrants that Calais was a “dead end” and that their asylum requests in France would be processed “very quickly.”
Around 70 percent of migrants evicted from other camps in Calais in the past had been given French residency, he said.
British officials have been racing to process child refugees seeking to be transferred to Britain before they become scattered around France.
By Saturday, the number of minors given a one-way ticket to Britain under a fast-tracked process launched a week ago stood at 194, according to France Terre d’Asile, a charity helping in the process.
Most have relatives across the Channel but 53 girls with no family in Britain were also accepted on Saturday, France Terre d’Asile said.
Jungle migrants urged to ‘give up on British dream’
Jungle migrants urged to ‘give up on British dream’
Federal judge rules Kilmar Abrego Garcia can’t be re-detained by immigration authorities
- Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia because a 90-day detention period has expired and the government has no viable plan for deporting him, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.
The Salvadoran national’s case has become a focal point in the immigration debate after he was mistakenly deported to his home country last year. Since his return, he has been fighting a second deportation to a series of African countries proposed by Department of Homeland Security officials.
The government “made one empty threat after another to remove him to countries in Africa with no real chance of success,” U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, wrote in her Tuesday order. “From this, the Court easily concludes that there is no ‘good reason to believe’ removal is likely in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge ruled that he could not be deported to El Salvador because he faced danger there from a gang that had threatened his family. By mistake, he was deported there anyway last year.
Facing public pressure and a court order, President Donald Trump’s administration brought him back in June, but only after securing an indictment charging him with human smuggling in Tennessee. He has pleaded not guilty. Meanwhile, Trump officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. In court filings, officials have said they intended to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Liberia.
In her Tuesday order, Xinis noted the government has “purposely — and for no reason — ignored the one country that has consistently offered to accept Abrego Garcia as a refugee, and to which he agrees to go.” That country is Costa Rica.
Abrego Garcia's attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, argued in court that immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment. Immigrants can only be detained as a way to facilitate their deportation and cannot be held indefinitely with no viable deportation plan.
“Since Judge Xinis ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia released in mid-December, the government has tried one trick after another to try to get him re-detained,” Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote in an email on Tuesday. “In her decision today, she recognized that if the government were truly trying to remove Mr. Abrego Garcia from the United States, they would have sent him to Costa Rica long before today.”
The government should now engage in a good-faith effort to work out the details of removal to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg wrote.
