Rwanda is no deterrent, warns Calais jungle academic

RWANDA deportation flights will not stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, an academic who spent four weeks interviewing asylum seekers living in the camps in northern France has said.

In a 5,000-word account of her experience, Dr Sophie Watt, a lecturer at the

University of Sheffield, said the violent tactics of the French police in regularly clearing the camps were backfiring by further motivating people to leave France and cross to the UK.

She said the living conditions in the camps were reminiscent of the infamous Calais “jungle” shut down in 2016, but people now faced the added threat of violence at night and rivalries between the heavily armed mafia traffickers that could result in shoot-outs. “But nobody I spoke to would be deterred [from attempting the crossings]: not by the brutal camp evacuations; the fear of smuggling gangs, the terror of the crossings; or even the promise of a flight to Rwanda once landing in the UK,” she wrote in an essay for The Conversation.

“If anything, the violence and lack of hospitality at the French border which represent unprecedented breaches of fundamental rights of refugees further motivates people to cross.”

As one Egyptian asylum seeker told her: “I could not live in the jungle any longer, I was determined to come to the UK. I had to try.”

Her research comes as the Home Office yesterday confirmed nearly 800 migrants crossed the Channel this weekend, bringing the total so far this year to 5,435. This is a record high for the first three months of the year.

The record early surge this year comes despite a three-year, £480 million Anglo-french deal, agreed by Rishi Sunak last year, to pay for a doubling in officers patrolling French beaches to 800, a joint command centre, and a detention centre to prevent migrants from leaving France.