Police to storm migrants’ camp on UK doorstep
Cops to tear down Calais camp Migrants facing brutal eviction Mayor: UK must sort pr oblem
A NEW camp where up to 1,000 desperate migrants have gathered on Britain’s doorstep is set to be razed to the ground tomorrow.
The African and Middle Eastern refugees at the makeshift site in the French port of Calais were bracing themselves last night for a rough eviction by riot police.
They have been living in the tented city on a chemical waste dump in the hope of sneaking on to a lorry or finding a small boat to make the 20-mile journey across the Channel to Britain.
The site developed after a previous camp revealed by a Sunday People investigation in April was bulldozed by French authorities.
Last Monday a court gave the squatters seven days to quit the new site, dubbed Jungle 2 in reference to a large camp destroyed in 2009.
Sources said riot police will move in tomorrow at dawn.
But even they know they are fighting a losing battle against the relentless tide of asylum seekers desperate to get to the UK.
Nervous
Detention centres are overcrowded and those arrested are quickly freed. And those “deported” – usually to the border with Belgium – are soon back.
A police spokesman said controlling the migrants is like “trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon”.
Aid organisations insist arrests and expulsions are not the answer.
Jean- Claude Lenoir, president of charity Salam which has been feeding the migrants, has said: “It’s intolerable that these expulsions are carried out without an alternative being proposed.”
Another charity, Calais Migrant Solidarity, said: “There are lots of women and kids living in the Jungle.
“People are scared of police controls and raids, and are nervous about another brutal eviction.
“To move hundreds of people will mean another large and forceful police operation that would likely result in many people in detention and facing deportation, as well as many back on the streets again trying to find somewhere to go.”
Most of the latest wave are from Eritrea in east Africa, with others from neighbouring Ethiopia and Sudan, and from Afghanistan and Syria.
In recent weeks their numbers have increased rapidly, raising fresh fears of a new Sangatte – the Calais asylum seekers’ refuge which sparked a massive British immigration crisis before its closure 12 years ago.
They gather in the shadow of P&O passenger ferries carrying British daytrippers.
They spend nights under canvas with no drinking water or sanitary facilities. During the day they try to leap on UKbound trucks as they slow down or stop at junctions leading to ferries.
Many are injured and some have been killed as they fall off trailers and are run over by following lorries.
Shut
Others try to cut their way into trailers at truckers’ cafés where drivers rest before heading for Britain.
Earlier this month a group of migrants were discovered crouching inside a lorry and were evicted by drivers who face fines of several thousand euros if migrants are found in their vehicles.
Angry and frustrated at being discovered, the migrants returned with iron bars and attacked the drivers. The owner of the café was forced to shut for several days after complaints by his terrified female staff.
He put up a sign in English reading “Closed. Reason: migrants”.
On Thursday water flowing through a plastic pipe to a sports centre which had been cut open by the thirsty squatters was cut off.
They now have to rely on bottles of mineral water brought by aid workers to drink and wash.
Calais mayor Natacha Bouchart has repeatedly called on the UK to take responsibility for the migrants.
Problem
She blames Britain’s “generous” benefits system for its attraction to refugees who travel thousands of miles to the Channel ports.
Madame Bouchart wants the UK’s opt- out from Europe’s borderless Schengen agreement to be scrapped.
That would allow the migrants legal passage across the Channel, leaving UK border authorities to deal with the problem.
More than 7,400 migrants have been arrested in Calais this year, more than double the 3,129 detained in the same period last year.
Alliance, a union representing French police officers, says officers are virtually powerless to tackle the migrant problem because they do not have the resources to smash people-smuggling rings.