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.