‘If I go, I know they will detain me’: Asylum seekers consider skipping Home Office meetings over Rwanda fears
In June 2022, Kidus, 30, from Eritrea, came to the UK in a small boat with around two dozen other people.
He still has the video on his phone showing everyone – including some women and children – clinging on to the dinghy wearing identical red lifejackets.
Back then, the government had already announced plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Despite being sent a letter warning he’s being considered for removal, he’s never thought it could really happen until now.
Kidus – not his real name – says before he left France, one of the people smugglers reassured him the government wouldn’t go through with it: the Rwanda policy simply wouldn’t affect him.
But earlier this month, one of his friends from Eritrea, who was on the same boat across the Channel, was detained when attending a routine appointment with the Home Office at a site in Liverpool.
As a result, Kidus is now considering not going to his next fortnightly meeting, even though attending the appointments is a condition of his immigration bail.
“If I didn’t go there, I know they’ll drop my case,” he tells us, concerned his asylum application will be cancelled.
But he adds: “If I go I know they will detain me. So, I’m just confused what I’m going to do.”
Kidus says he fears being deported to Rwanda
A document drawn up by Home Office officials revealed only 2,143 of the 5,700 asylum seekers Rwanda has agreed to accept actually attend check-ins and “can be located for detention”.
If people like Kidus stop attending, they will join the remaining 3,557 migrants who are currently missing.
The shared house Kidus lives in is paid for by the Home Office – so his address makes it almost impossible to disappear. But this means he knows he could be detained at any time.
“I’m always just frightened here. So, they might come at night or day and I’m always thinking that they’ll come and they’ll take me to detention. I’m not feeling safe here,” he says.
Kidus has stopped attending college where he was learning English and carries the phone numbers of legal firms with him at all times.
He speaks to his friend on the phone – who is now being held in a detention centre near Heathrow.
Nahom, not his real name, 26, estimates he’s among around 40 asylum seekers there who’ve been told they’ll be sent to Rwanda.
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“It’s like a nightmare, it’s like a prison and I don’t like it here. I’m really stressed and panicked about the situation,” Nahom tells us from the site almost 100 miles away.
He admits he has been able to meet his solicitor but says he’s feeling increasingly desperate about being faced with the prospect of being sent to Rwanda.
“They can send my body, but not me alive,” he says. “I’m just giving up.”
In west London, we meet Nura, in her 20s, whose real name is withheld and who has made the decision to keep attending meetings with the Home Office because she doesn’t want to be kicked out of her taxpayer-funded hotel.
Nura says she will keep going to the appointments
Read more:
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But each time she goes to sign in she’s terrified of being detained.
“Sometimes I say ‘why me’?” she asks tearfully, looking at her “notice of intent” letter warning her she’s being considered for removal to Rwanda.
“It’s not a safe country,” she adds. “What is the difference from Eritrea? It’s the same.”
Nura says when she came to the UK by small boat, she believed women wouldn’t be sent to Rwanda. She says she wouldn’t have come if she’d known she was at risk.
The notice of intent letter
Kidus says the same thing: “If I’d have known this I’d have never come here.” He added he’d have instead gone to “Belgium or France, or Germany maybe”.
Now they’re here, their only hope is they won’t be chosen for detention.
The government remains determined to get the first flights to Rwanda within weeks.
Ahead of a general election, the plan has become a clear dividing line between the Conservatives and Labour, which has vowed to scrap the scheme if it comes to power.
The crash involving a cargo ship and oil tanker off the East Yorkshire coast is bad news for the sea, fish and air in the area. What we don’t know yet is quite how bad it will be.
That depends on a few things – but the speed of the collision, clouds of filthy black smoke from the fires and the leaked fuel are certainly worrying.
Firstly, it matters what was on board those two massive vessels.
Follow live: Jet fuel spilling into sea after tanker collision
Analytics firm Vortexa estimates the 183m-long tanker was carrying about 130,000 barrels of jet fuel (kerosene), which is now leaking into the sea.
Jet fuel is not as sticky or viscous as heavier types of oil, thankfully, so it’s less likely to clog the feathers and fur of birds and seals. It can also be broken down by natural bacteria.
But it can still poison fish and kill animals and plants on the shoreline if it makes its way into the soil there.
The Marine Conservation Society has pointed out the site in the Humber estuary is close to some protected areas and is important for seabirds and harbour porpoises.
And both ships will have been powered by a dirtier, heavier kind of oil – likely marine gas oil or heavy fuel oil, though we don’t know the details yet.
Heavy fuel oil is nasty stuff.
Pic: Bartek Smialek/PA
Cheap, thick and tar-like, it can smother animals and is very dangerous if they consume it, and is extremely difficult to clean up. Let’s hope this isn’t creeping around the North Sea already.
We don’t know how much of either the jet fuel or the oil powering the ships has leaked, or how much will be burned off in the violent fires – which themselves are ploughing black smoke and filthy air pollution into the surrounding atmosphere.
And we don’t know for sure what was on the Solong cargo ship and if, or what, will go into the sea.
Cargo ship ‘had sodium cyanide on board’
It was carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide among other cargo, according to a report from maritime data provider Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
The container vessel was also transporting an unknown quantity of alcohol, said the casualty report – an assessment of incidents at sea – citing a message from the local coastguard.
Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down, and potentially can choke or trap animals.
Many of us have seen that uncomfortable viral video of a turtle having a straw yanked out of its nose. Previous accidents on cargo ships have seen plastic Lego pieces wash up in Cornwall 25 years later.
Read more:
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Secondly, the impact depends on the sea and weather conditions around it.
Things like the wind and currents affect how an oil spill spreads in the sea. Scientists can draw up computer models to simulate how the oil could behave.
Thirdly, it matters how quickly this is all tackled and then cleaned up, if necessary, and if it can be.
Usually the slower the response, the worse the impact.
The coastguard has said the incident “remains ongoing” and it has started assessing the “likely counter pollution response” that will be required.
Such a response might need the help of numerous public bodies: the government environment department, the transport department, the Environment Agency and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
So for now the best we can hope for – aside from the welfare of the people involved – is that not all the oil is spilled or burnt, that conditions are calm and that rescuers and those cleaning up can work swiftly.
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