“They treated us worse than the water in the toilet,” said Krzysztof Mikucki, about his experience at British passport control in Calais on Wednesday night. The Polish-born builder, who lives in the UK, was trying to bring his Ukrainian wife and her family to safety, thinking they’d be allowed to apply for visas at the ferry port. Instead, he told the Guardian earlier this week, they were kept waiting for four hours while Border Force staff chatted and laughed among themselves. “At 5.30am they just gave us a piece of paper with a phone number on it.”
Stories like this have proliferated since Russia’s invasion began on 24 February. They have all the familiar ingredients of a Home Office scandal: an overly complicated bureaucracy that seems designed to trip immigrants up rather than help them; rude and callous officials; ministers who appear not to know what their own department is doing. Last week the home secretary, Priti Patel, was criticised by some of her fellow Conservative MPs for giving misleading information when she referred to “support on the ground” for refugees at Calais.
