Fears of new migrant influx as 100 refugees arrive in Calais close to old Jungle site
SNAKING over a scrubby patch of industrial wasteland in Calais, the tired and hungry migrants wait patiently for a filling meal.
Every day they visit this charity project for perhaps the only food they will eat that day.
There are around 100 of them, but next week there will almost certainly be more.
And it is a prospect that terrifies the locals and authority figures, who know only too well what can happen at this busy ferry port.
Eight months after the notorious Jungle camp was bulldozed and France vowed to end the chaos in the Channel town, desperate migrants are returning, determined to make their way to Britain. There are already 600 in Calais, say aid workers.
Poignantly, the 100 or so queuing are less than half a mile from the sand dunes where last year up to 9,000 had set up the camp that became known as the Jungle.
Nearby, more youths loiter by the motorway which carries freight to the ferry terminals, playing a cat-and-mouse game with tear gas-wielding police who are out in force to try to stop them sneaking on to UK-bound lorries.
Locals fear the migrant problems of the past two years are about to revisit them.
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This week a court in nearby Lille ruled that authorities must provide water and sanitation facilities for the latest wave of migrants.
It was a move that the mayor of Calais, Natacha Bouchart, and the leaders of neighbouring communities, fear will make Calais a magnet for more illegal travellers. They have vowed to appeal.
Xavier Bertrand, head of the Hauts-de-France regional council and the most senior politician in the Calais area, has written to French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe to warn of a summer of chaos.
He said: “The situation has become worrying again. I’m regularly alerted by road hauliers who are seeing an upsurge in damage to their trucks.
“Every day residents, elected officials and business leaders express their concerns about the return of the migrants to Calais.”
The town’s business leaders are desperate to reboot Calais as a “peaceful” home for investment. Only last week they launched a £150,000 marketing drive to try to attract British investors post-Brexit.
Ms Bouchart told 1,000 British guests: “You must be our ambassadors to certify that Calais is a peaceful town that has been transformed during the migrant crisis.”
Tragically, it coincided with the death of a Polish van driver in a pile-up near Calais after migrants blocked a road with tree trunks so they could try to board lorries that were forced to halt at the barricade.
Nine Eritreans face manslaughter charges following the death.
There were more barricades of burning branches this week. Road signs in French and English regularly warn drivers of pedestrians and blockages on the carriageway.
Charles Cousin, mayor of nearby town Guemps, said this week: “Each night I am called about barricades produced on the A16.
“These barricades are more numerous and violent than those we knew last year before the Jungle was dismantled.
“I believe there will be more deaths, injuries and destroyed cars.”
He said he would appeal for help directly to France’s President Macron.
Meanwhile, within sight of the old Jungle, dishevelled migrants gather on industrial slag heaps and in nearby woodland.
It is here that those not in squats or charity-supplied safe-houses try to sleep when they are not being hunted by police or trying to smuggle themselves aboard lorries.
Some were previously at a migrant centre near Dunkirk which burned down in April after a fight between Afghan and Sudanese men. Many were previously in the Jungle.
Somali teenager Abdulaziz Ahmad, 17, was among them. When the Jungle was demolished he was rehoused in a reception centre in Rennes, more than 300 miles away, and he began the process of trying to claim asylum.
But after four months he grew frustrated with the slow French bureaucracy and gave up. He has only the clothes he stands in, a phone, wallet and a plastic sleeping bag given to him by a charity.
Now he is back trying to climb aboard trucks, running the gauntlet of the police.
Abdulaziz said: “We know it is dangerous but we have no other possibility because France is not giving answers on asylum requests so people come back here.
“The police here, they are very hard on us. Thank God I can run fast, like Usain Bolt!”
A recent survey by British charity the Refugee Rights Data Project claimed police brutality was “endemic” in Calais. Many of the migrants claim they bear the bruises from baton blows and sore eyes from the tear gas used on them.
Since the Jungle’s demise, fencing has been put up to separate the feeding point from the woods and slag heaps where migrants gather. British chef Sam Jones runs Refugee Community Kitchen, a 15-strong team that can make 2,000 meals a day.
He said: “The whole thing is inhumane. It’s like snakes and ladders. People who were in the Calais Jungle are coming back, trying again, but it’s got harder.”
Of the roughly 6,000 adult migrants evacuated when the Jungle was dismantled in October, around 70 per cent were granted asylum, according to French Interior Ministry figures.
But the remaining 1,800 or so are still on the road, as are the 1,952 isolated children, of whom fewer than 800 were let into the UK.
Charity workers in Calais expect a surge in numbers coming from countries such as Eritrea, Sudan and Afghanistan this summer.
Francois Guennoc, of French voluntary organisation L’Auberge des Migrants, said: “We knew migrants would come back. The weather is improving and many of them tell us that others are on their way.”
Aid workers have reported an outbreak of scabies among the migrants already in Calais because of their atrocious living conditions.
Eleven charities and human rights groups went to court in Lille to call for the building of a new migrant welcome centre. On Monday a judge gave the French government and Calais council ten days in which to “prevent migrants being subjected to inhuman treatment”.
The judge stopped short of approving a new centre but ordered the provision of water points and sanitary facilities for the migrants.
Mr Guennoc said: “Basically, we consider that we won. The administrative court recognised the urgency of the situation, the need to give access to fundamental rights and to stop interfering with the work of charities.”
But Calais mayor Ms Bouchart slammed the “unacceptable requirements of the court” saying she and her fellow councillors had “unanimously decided not to implement the measures imposed locally, and to appeal”.
She has been supported by the mayors of neighbouring communities, who fear migrants forced out of Calais will come to their areas.
Michel Hamy, mayor of nearby Coquelles, said: “I represent the town of the Channel Tunnel and I don’t want to see a revival of the situation of the past two years.
“We mustn’t make it easy for the migrants, otherwise we will have 5,000 or 10,000 on our territory.”
Local road hauliers federation chief David Sagnard added: “We are humanitarians — but we don’t want the humanity in Calais, otherwise it will create a magnet.”
Last week Richard Burnett, of the UK’s Road Haulage Association, saw for himself the new build-up of migrants.
He said: “It’s shocking. I get a sense we’re heading for another summer of discontent.
“This is identical to how it all started two years ago.”
French interior minister Gerard Collomb has ruled out building a welcome centre for UK-bound migrants in Calais. During an emergency visit to the town on June 23 he said the only solution to a growing build-up of asylum seekers was better security.
As well as the Jungle, he referred to the notorious Red Cross centre in nearby Sangatte, which turned into a magnet for thousands around the world before being closed down in 2002.
He said: “Sangatte and the Jungle show what happens. I’m suspicious of centres that are ready to accept migrants for only a few days and that eventually become permanent.
“We will strengthen security with additional mobile police to stop new camps being formed.”
Mr Collomb said new measures would be taken to stop incidents on the approach road to Calais.
Regional state official Fabien Sudry has also said he is considering an appeal against some of Monday’s court decisions.
He said: “We are determined to prevent any kind of permanent settlement in the Calais area. These are complex issues and we want to avoid creating any new pull effect.”
