After a tortuous, costly and dangerous journey, the migrants who finally set foot on much-desired British soil find themselves under the control of an opaque and dehumanizing system. Carried around the country from centers to hotels for months, without information, some asylum seekers are disillusioned. Report. Charlotte Oberti, special correspondent in London and Dover (Kent). from Heathrow. This Holiday Inn, surrounded by expressways, has a frankly hostile appearance. As its name does not indicate, it is no longer a hotel for vacationers: the structure has been requisitioned by the authorities to house migrants rescued from the Channel. Inside, there are hundreds, perhaps a thousand, mostly from Iran and Afghanistan, spending languid days in this area far from any convenience. “We were transferred here on November 20. No one told us how long we would stay there. It’s been five months,” says Esmatullah Fetrat, whose hair is already turning white despite his young age. Esmatullah Fetrat, a 25-year-old Afghan years old, was rescued at sea on November 3, 2021 in the English Channel when he saw himself dying. Credit: InfoMigrantsFor Esmatullah, a transport engineer, a potential target of the Taliban because of his work for the former government and his belonging to the Hazara minority, the boredom of this hotel is the culmination of a winding journey that drove through the forests and mountains of Europe, then to Calais, it seems. Because the young man could not say the name of the cities and even the countries crossed during the months which followed his flight from Afghanistan. The only country Esmatullah had in mind was England. He is one of the 28,000 exiles who crossed the Channel in 2021, sure of being able to find safety in this country whose language he speaks. But, rescued at sea on November 3, he has since been confronted with a rigid system in which he feels drowned. make no secret of it: migrants, especially those from the waters of the Channel, are not welcome in the country. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who multiplies shock announcements to dissuade these departures from the French coasts, recently brandished the threat of an expulsion of asylum seekers to Rwanda. In the meantime, on the spot, the management of asylum seekers turns out to be military. The first registration center in Dover, the accommodation center in Manston, that in Napier, the detention centers… which migrants can be sent during the first months after their arrival can be dizzying. Added to this, 200 hotels, spread throughout the country, accommodate asylum seekers for varying periods of time. If this organization makes it possible to avoid the formation of wild camps – non-existent across the Channel -, it sins by its opacity and its stiffness, even its absurdity. “Migrants are regularly moved, without knowing where”, comments Bridget Chapman, member of Kent Refugees Action Network (KRAN), an association that helps young people. Some, who arrived on the Kent coast, were sent to London and then, a few weeks later, brought back to centers in Kent. At any time, they can be transferred elsewhere, without warning. Sidiq, a 20-year-old Afghan, passed through a detention center before being taken to the Holiday Inn hotel. Credit: InfoMigrantsOne night, around 3 a.m., while he was in a detention center located opposite Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport, Sidiq, another 20-year-old Afghan, was woken up by beatings against his door. “I was told: ‘You are leaving’. I didn’t know where. I didn’t have time to take all my things. I had to leave some behind me.” That night, the authorities transferred him to the Holiday Inn, a stone’s throw away, with incomprehensible haste and lack of anticipation. “Why are people sent to one center rather than another? We have no idea,” said Maddie Harris, founder of the Humans for Rights Network, an NGO that documents violations of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. “Each stage of this process is totally locked. In the early stages, migrants have no access to information or legal support. And we, members of associations, have no access to them. I I have never met a migrant who had just arrived in the country.” According to several testimonies, it is also common for migrants’ telephones to be confiscated from them in the first days following their arrival, reinforcing their feeling isolation.”We slept on the floor, in a large shed”In fact, during their first weeks in England, the migrants do not see anyone except the representatives of the authorities. The Dover processing center, the first crossing point for exiles intercepted at sea, located on the docks, is hidden behind a black tarpaulin that lets nothing be seen. The Migrant Registration Center at Dover Docks. Credit: InfoMigrants”It’s like a big hangar, we slept on the floor, without a pillow”, describes Sidiq, who spent 15 hours in the English Channel in the fall, aboard a boat which “didn’t work good “.” Migrants spend the night on the concrete. They have no privacy and sometimes keep their clothes wet for days, “says Bridget Chapman, who is based on numerous testimonies. “There are also injured people, left without care.”>> To (re) read: British justice declares “illegal” the reception conditions in the “sordid” center of NapierAccording to Bridget Chapman, the ban on access serves to hide the conditions under which they are placed. “If we don’t see what’s going on, we can’t denounce,” she said, from the heights of Folkestone, a small town along the coast, castigating the “hostility” of the authorities towards migrants. “Before, KRAN had access to Napier. It was horrible in there. It was freezing cold. We talked about it in the media, and since then our access to Napier has been taken away from us,” she says. , bitter.The former military barracks in Napier, unused for several years before the arrival of the migrants, indeed made headlines in June 2021, when the High Court in London declared that the reception conditions there were “unlawful “. However, their closure has not been decreed. And recently a blue tarpaulin was installed all around these barracks, making these places secret again. accommodation for migrants. The places are regularly described as unsuitable. Credit: InfoMigrants “It’s just inhumane to treat these people like that, continues Bridget Chapman. However, with Brexit and the lack of manpower, we need them so much here. We should kiss their feet at their arrival.”Word of mouthThe opacity of this system also concerns the asylum application procedure itself. Esmatullah Fetrat, who says he “doesn’t understand the law”, gets lost in the forms he has to fill out. Recently he learned that he could seek the help of a public defender, paid by the State. Because help does exist, even if the information is difficult to obtain. Word of mouth between migrants is still what works best. In the hotels, new arrivals learn from those who have been there for several months now that the state-mandated Migrant Help organization is there to help them. “It was the migrants who were in the hotel before me who told me, the authorities do not give the information”, explains Esmatullah Fetrat, “so now I do the same, I help the newcomers” Left in the dark, migrants are also particularly sensitive to rumours. “Some people say we’re going to be sent back. Others say it’s going to take us 15 years to get asylum. What’s going to happen to us?” asks the Afghan, from rhetorical way. He does not expect an answer. “It’s impossible to think about the future.”