Why we must not forget the Rwanda plan
One year ago today, five refugees sat in an airfield waiting to be forcibly deported to Rwanda. The government wanted them to be a kind of showpiece, the first refugees sent to Rwanda under the new scheme which had been announced that April. Under the brutal plan, any refugee who came to the UK but was deemed “inadmissible” by the government could be deported to Rwanda with no chance of ever returning to the UK. Since May 9 that year, we had been aware of 130 shocked and traumatised people being taken into detention. Our team worked closely with many …