Channel migrants handed Rwanda removal letters within days of arrival on UK shores

MIGRANTS who crossed the Channel in small boats last week have already received letters warning they could be sent to Rwanda.

In a sign of the Government’s resolve to continue the controversial policy, officials have sent out a wave of fresh notifications, including to a group of ten Albanians.

The Mail on Sunday understands that one of the seven migrants in the final group to avoid being flown to Rwanda last week – after a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights – is an Albanian farmhand in his mid-20s who arrived in Dover last month after crossing the Channel in a small boat.

Speaking from the family’s twobedroom home in a remote village, his mother, who is in her 50s, said: ‘May God help my son. He told me he will kill himself if he is sent to live in Africa by the British. I am begging your Prime Minister Boris Johnson not to send him to Rwanda. I will never see him again.’

The farmhand, like hundreds of young Albanian men who head for Britain, told the UK authorities that traffickers arranged his journey, first from his village in northern Albania to northern France, and then – after spending seven months in a migrant camp – on a boat across the Channel to Britain.

Albanian police say he has no criminal record. Asked how her impoverished son could afford his journey, the mother said: ‘Maybe the traffickers sent him to England to work for them, make themselves money from him, and to pay back his fares.’

Ten Albanians who came ashore after Tuesday and are at the Colnbrook immigration removal centre near Heathrow are among those who received letters saying they could be sent to Rwanda.