Ali had spent all weekend reading about the Illegal Migration Bill becoming law. “Why doesn’t the UK want me?” He asked. “Why don’t they understand?”

Ali fled Sudan when his family were killed, and he knew he would be killed too if the militia found him. All he wants is to be safe. But now he’s in an impossible situation. In France, the police take his tent every few days. He thinks if he goes to the UK, he will be imprisoned in a barge or sent to Rwanda. “I can’t go to Libya because I was kidnapped and kept in prison there. I can’t go back to Sudan because they might kill me.”

He was close to tears. “Where can I go?” he said. “Tell me, where can I go?”

All the volunteers in Calais have been shocked by the huge amount of difficult conversations we’ve had with refugees this weekend. The people we support here in Calais are terrified.

Everyday you hear stories from people of the violence, persecution and suffering they have escaped in their home country. You hear about dangerous journeys they have made to reach Europe. In France, many have been harassed and abused simply for being refugees.

Despite all of this, they are even more scared of what will happen now because of the new law in the UK.

Because of this, people in Calais are taking even more risks to get to the UK before these laws are acted upon. In the last few days there has been a lot of talk about the picture shown here, taken by a photographer called Johan Ben Azzouz from La Voix Du Nord newspaper. It shows a dinghy overloaded with refugees setting off from the beach in Boulogne in broad daylight, in full view of holidaymakers.

Boulogne is much further from the UK than Calais, so the journey is more dangerous. Boats like this has not been seen setting off like this before, and it’s a sure sign that refugees, desperate and out of options, are now taking more and more risks

That means more people are likely to die from dangerous journeys in the weeks and months ahead.

When people have no other choice they do desperate things. People like Ali have no other choice.

I, volunteer

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The Illegal Migration bill will allow this Government to detain and forcibly deport thousands of refugees, simply for having the temerity to ask for asylum in the UK.  Its restrictions on people’s rights are truly chilling.

The consequences will be appalling, but we must first understand how it came to pass in the first place.

Its roots lie in the Brexit campaign’s politics of fear.  In 2016, Leave campaigners instilled a terror of migration with billboards showing 1,000s of refugees supposedly marching supposedly towards the UK.  And since then Conservative Governments have stoked that terror, by telling us that refugees are “illegal migrants”.

“Illegal” in this context implies the people in question are criminals, and therefore undeserving of human rights. It is a form of propaganda and discrimination now acknowledged as stage in genocides.

 This week Robert Jenrick, the Minister of State for Immigration, said  the alien values of people crossing the Channel in small boats threatened the UK’s social cohesion. It is surely impossible to hear that and not be reminded of Gary Linker’s comment about the political language of 1930s Germany.

This seven-year-long deployment of the politics of fear explains how and why we have the Bill. It represents nothing less than using the most vulnerable people in society – they don’t have status or papers, so they can’t defend themselves – to scare us into voting how the powerful want us to.  It is bullying on a grand, industrial scale.

Of course the policies themselves are pointless. Even Rishi Sunak has admitted that he doesn’t know if this bill will “stop the boats”. But that is not their purpose.

The pressing question is: what will happen when the Bill comes in?

First, let’s look at the detention aspect.

We currently have a huge asylum accommodation issue. We have over 50,000 people living in long-term hotel accommodation, and nearly 100,000 in asylum housing.  Provision of that asylum accommodation costs us billions each year, and the cost has at least doubled with the backlog.  That is a big increase in profits for some people.

The Illegal Migration Bill will mean that refugees will be housed in detention facilities. The psychological impact on those detained will be immense, but there is a little-noticed financial aspect to this too.

The detention facilities currently proposed will be cheaper, and generate more profit than the current accommodation. Moreover, they will be out of the public eye and not accessible to NGOs and journalists who might expose poor treatment of asylum seekers or advocate for their rights.

It is hard to resist the suspicion that for some, there is a serious financial motive for NOT reducing the backlog.

Finally, will people be deported?  Well, the Rwanda scheme is still going through the courts and there are no agreements with any other country to take our unwanted refugees, so it is questionable that anyone will ever actually be deported to a third country.

We must pray, that they are not. And we must fight every day for the humane treatment of those who have, after all, come to us asking only help and safety.

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