DOZENS of asylum-seekers are set to be removed from Britain next week as the Home Office accelerates its brutal deportation drive ahead of Brexit.

Three charter flights to EU nations are scheduled to Germany, Belgium, France and Spain despite warnings that the Home Office’s rushed removal operations risk unlawfully deporting vulnerable people. 

Among those facing imminent deportation is Saleh (not his real name), a Yemeni asylum-seeker.

Saleh has spent just four months in Britain. He arrived this summer, making the perilous Channel crossing like thousands of others in the hope of securing a safe future for him and his family.

“I had hope when I finally made it to Britain, and hoped for a better life, but what I face now is completely different,” he tells me over a call from Brook House detention centre.

“Now I feel like my life is going to end because I don’t know where I am going.”

The Yemeni national is booked on a charter flight to Belgium, where he spent four months sleeping on the streets earlier this year.

“I don’t know if I’ll be given asylum or made homeless again, I don’t know what is going to happen next.” 

Since arriving in Britain, Saleh has lived in a constant state of uncertainty, whisked from one horrifying facility to the next.

For the majority of his time here, the asylum-seeker was held in the notorious Napier Barracks, a former army camp in Kent.

I spoke to Saleh in October while he was a resident of the camp.

He described the conditions as akin to a prison, and had not left the facility for two weeks due to intimidation from far-right activists stationed outside.

The Home Office is now facing a series of legal challenges over the “inhumane” and “potentially unlawful” conditions in the camp, which holds around 400 asylum-seekers in rooms with up to 15 beds.

After three months at the camp, Saleh was informed by the Home Office that he was going to be picked up and taken to different accommodation.

What Saleh didn’t know was that the Home Office was seeking to detain and deport him.

He was moved to a hotel for the night before immigration officials came knocking at 6am the next morning. 

“That is how the Home Office deceives people, they say they are going to move you from your accommodation to somewhere else.”

Saleh is in the latest cohort of asylum-seekers targeted by the Home Office’s deportation drive.

In August Home Secretary Priti Patel pledged to deport 1,000 asylum-seekers as part of her public relations campaign against those crossing the Channel in small boats.

The returns are carried out under EU law — the Dublin III Regulation — which allow countries to return asylum-seekers to other member states they have passed through on their journeys.

Campaigners have accused the department of rushing through returns before Brexit, when Britain can no longer use these laws.

At least 17 charter flights to EU member states have been scheduled since August, at a rate of around two per week.

Multiple reports have shown that asylum-seekers are often dumped upon arrival, forced to live on the streets and even given deportation orders to their country of origin.

The Home Office has pushed ahead with the drive despite concerns that the accelerated process prevents asylum-seekers getting proper access to justice and risks unlawful removals of trafficking victims.

Legal policy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigration Chai Patel tells me: “It appears that the Home Office is doing its utmost to rush through removals to Europe before 2021, without calmly and fairly assessing people’s claims.

“The fact that it is still deporting so many vulnerable people during a global pandemic — leaving many destitute and at risk — shows they are clearly prioritising speed over fairness and public health.”

Saleh believes there’s something very wrong with the system in Britain. 

“The people in the Home Office need to listen to people,” he said.

“They never gave me a chance. I want them to ask me why I would take this risk to cross the channel and put my life in danger. Do they think I am doing this for an adventure? I want them to ask me why I came here, not how I came here.”

Saleh fled Yemen with his family after he refused to fight with the militias in his country’s brutal civil war.

His family are now in hiding in an Arab country where they live illegally after being refused papers.

Because of this his five children are unable to go to school. Saleh then moved alone to Europe. He entered Spain first, but was refused support and assistance and forced to live on the streets.

He then went to Belgium, where he was put up in a shelter for a short period before the authorities threatened to remove him back to Spain.

Patel has accused asylum-seekers of “shopping around” for asylum in Europe, but the reality is that many end up with no choice but to move on after being forced into destitution and often exploitation.

Being returned to an EU member state could also lead to the eventual deportation of asylum-seekers to their country of origin.

In the past few days Saleh has been able to find a lawyer to take his case.

It comes after months of trying in vain to find legal representation. Saleh was able to find a solicitor through the help of a support network founded by Ahmed (not his real name), a Yemen national who is also seeking asylum in Britain.

Earlier this year Ahmed set up a WhatsApp group (which now has around 400 members) to fill the huge void left by authorities to help asylum-seekers.

The purpose of the group is to identify people’s needs, help them understand the legal system, access English classes and if possible, connect them with solicitors. 

But this has become more and more difficult in recent weeks, due to the high concentration of charter flights.

“So many people receive negative replies [from solicitors], they don’t have capacity because now the Home Office is insisting to deport as much as they can before December,” Ahmed tells me.

Lack of access to legal advice has been a major concern among campaigners and lawyers.

Concerns have become more acute as interventions from solicitors have identified numerous attempts by the Home Office to illegally deport asylum-seekers.

An interim High Court ruling last month found the Home Office had potentially acted unlawfully by carrying out abridged asylum screening interviews which failed to identify victims of trafficking and torture.

The ruling ordered the Home Office to reinclude questions in the screening process which help to ascertain this. However Ahmed said he knows of at least five people facing deportations who are victims of trafficking.

Last week four Yemeni asylum-seekers who had been forced to carry out unpaid labour by smugglers on their journeys were released from detention. 

The Home Office has rejected claims that any of next week’s removals are unlawful.

“It is an established principle that those in need of protection should seek asylum in the first safe country that they enter and not make dangerous onwards journeys,” a spokesperson said. 

“We only ever return those who we and, where applicable, the courts are satisfied do not need our protection and have no legal basis to remain in the UK, and we make no apologies for doing so.”

Saleh is one of 12 Yemeni nationals facing removal next week.

While the Home Office claims that all detainees are made aware of their right to legal representation within 24 hours of entering a detention centre, some still do not have legal representation, Ahmed said.

Each day he receives constant calls from friends facing removal.

The responsibility is a heavy burden. “I’m very happy when I help someone and he gets out, I feel really excited and I want to dance but at the same time when I hear the same day or next day that someone else has been detained … you know when you [are] fighting with an enemy and then you are beaten again and again … there is no end to this game.

“I want to wake up one morning [to] no detention, no deportation. I want this game to end. It’s non-stop, it’s continuous.”

For Saleh, the EU’s refusal to give them sanctuary despite playing a role in his country’s destruction is particularly painful.

“We are not welcome in the EU countries but at the same time they are fuelling the war with Saudi Arabia,” he said. “It’s a conflict — there is no logic in this. You have destroyed my house and at the same time you prevent me from looking for safety.”

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade tells me that the British government has played a “central role” in creating the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

The conflict has led to the largest humanitarian crisis in the world with 80 per cent of Yemen’s 24.1 million population in need of humanitarian aid and protection.

Since the fighting began in 2015, more than 17,500 civilians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have died from hunger and disease. 

Despite this, Britain has licenced £4.7 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the start of the conflict in 2015.

Patel, from JCWI, said Britain should have a “special responsibility to the innocent victims of this bloody trade for as long as we benefit from it,” while Smith said the government’s treatment of refugees is “consistently abhorrent.” 

“Politicians in the UK and beyond need to stop blaming the victims of these crises and consider their own complicity and role in creating the circumstances that have displaced so many people,” he added. 

Saleh is holding onto hope that his solicitor will get him off the flight. But with three charter flights on the horizon, it’s likely we’ll still see countless people deported into destitution in the dead of winter.