When Helen arrived at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, she was taken to her cell and handed some cleaning spray and wipes and told to use them before making up her bed. She had no idea why she had been arrested when she went to report.
“They told me I had been detained for Rwanda and tried to convince us to go voluntarily saying it is now the law and we have already been selected. But they didn’t explain to me why I had been chosen.”
“There were about seven of us women detained and we all tried our best not to think about being put on a plane and tried to support each other.”
She said that materials promoting the east African country were visible around the centre and made everyone feel more terrified.
“The walls in this place are tall and horrible and scary. I had never been detained before and knowing that the Home Office can take me to the airport and put me on a plane at any time was terrifying. All I could think about was how I could get out of this place.”
Soon after this interview, she was released from detention.
Although the Home Office refuses to confirm numbers for “operational reasons”, it is thought more than 100 asylum seekers from a variety of conflict zones including Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan were rounded up, bundled into immigration enforcement vans and detained before the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced that an election was being called for 4 July.
On Sunday dozens of campaigners from a coalition called Action Against Detention and Deportation, protested outside two detention centres where asylum seekers are still being detained by authorities intent on sending them to Rwanda – Brook House near Gatwick airport and Heathrow, close to the airport of the same name.
Since then confusion and chaos has descended – with those detained unsure about what happens next. Sunak has said publicly there will be no flights before the election, but in some of the Rwanda bail hearings Home Office officials have reportedly said that a flight is due to take off at the end of June, meaning the detentions are justified.
One judge described the detentions as “speculative”. The Home Office has declined to comment on these reports but government sources say the plan is still live and those who arrived in the UK between 1 January 2022 and 29 June 2023, and who received a notice of intent informing them that their asylum claim might be inadmissible, were still under consideration for removal.
Labour has said that if it is elected, it will scrap the Rwanda scheme. But the current uncertainty has given little comfort to the asylum seekers who say they are still fearful about being forcibly sent to the African country either before or after the election.
One Sudanese asylum seeker who has seen several of his friends rounded up and arrested but who has not been detained himself, told the Guardian: “None of us feel safe any more. I’m frightened to sleep in my Home Office accommodation in case they arrive in the middle of the night and take me for Rwanda.
“If I walk down the street and see a police car, I’m frightened they will catch me even though I have committed no crime. But we must continue to go and report or they will come and arrest us. We don’t have any choices. The whole thing is making me struggle to eat or to sleep.”
Shirley Hart of Welcome House in Hull, which supports asylum seekers in the area, described the “terrifying” way in which people she works with simply disappeared when the Home Office embarked on its pre-election round up, Operation Vector.
“When people disappear like this it breeds an atmosphere of terror,” she said. “Before this happened some of the asylum seekers were rebuilding their fragile confidence. Now they don’t know who they can trust. We liked to think we don’t live in a society where people are taken in the middle of the night and disappear.”
Of those detained, some have now been released. The charity Refugees At Home reported how one asylum seeker released from detention is now doing therapeutic gardening at the home of their host. But others remain in detention not knowing what will happen next.
One man from Eritrea who has been kept under lock and key until his bail hearing on Tuesday said: “I have been detained for 25 days although I have done nothing wrong. I want my freedom.
“We still believe that we could be sent to Rwanda. Nobody knows what will happen with the election and whether Rwanda will be cancelled after that. I don’t even like to hear anyone say the word ‘Rwanda’.
“It is so upsetting for us to think about this. I came here to find safety because of what is happening in my country but I haven’t yet found it. Can the Home Office tell me which planet I should go to, to find my freedom and my safety?”
