Many express confusion about plan to bus them to children’s homes across France where request to come to UK will be processed

The remaining asylum-seeking children in Calais are to be bussed to children’s homes across France, where their applications to come to the UK will be processed, the local government has announced.

The Calais prefecture issued a notice in nine languages on Tuesday, informing the estimated 1,500 people who remain in disused shipping containers on the site of the camp that they needed to register for wristbands, securing them a place on the buses which will begin leaving at 8am on Wednesday.

British officials would be on the buses, accompanying the asylum-seeking children, the notice added.

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“No further applications for transfer to the United Kingdom will be dealt with in Calais,” the statement read. “All cases with be handled and all departures for the UK will take place from the juvenile centres.”

This final large-scale transfer may mark the last major stage of the Calais camp clearances. As lorries took debris away, tents and wooden shacks were crushed, the grinding noise of bulldozers was audible throughout the site.

By the fenced-off container area of the site there were still hundreds of people milling around, most of whom were very confused about what was planned for Wednesday.

Wasil Anwari, 14, who said he fled Afghanistan earlier this year after both his parents were killed, showed a purple wristband marked bus 30. He said he had been given no information about where in France he was going to be taken. He was hoping to be given papers that allowed him to come to the UK eventually, so he could join his uncle, who works in a shop in London.

Some people said they thought the buses arriving on Wednesday were going to take them direct to London, while others said they thought they would be driven to Lille. “We aren’t given a choice. We will go somewhere in France, but we don’t know where,” Wasil said.



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Noorullah Hussaini, 17, also from Afghanistan and with a purple wristband, was preparing to leave. He said he was hopeful his application to join his sister in Manchester would eventually be successful. “They told me it would take between two weeks and two months,” he said of a 30-minute interview he had with Home Office officials last week in the camp.

Noorullah said he hoped to study to become a dentist in the UK, adding that because he was confident his request would be granted, he was not trying to come illegally to the UK on the back of lorries. “I want to go legally. There are too many dangers on the lorries,” he said.

Several other young people, however, said they were continuing the night-time attempts to smuggle themselves into vehicles because they were convinced this was the best option for them to rejoin family in the UK.



There were a few boys who appeared to be 11 or 12 queuing up for baked beans, dished out by volunteers outside the containers. But the majority of the remaining camp population appeared to be perhaps between 15 and 17. There were a few visibly older people claiming to be minors, so the work of processing them will not be simple.

Children were carrying belongings in plastic bin bags, many of them wearing flip-flops and shorts, inappropriately dressed for November weather.

The cleanup process continued around them, as workers gathered up abandoned eiderdowns hanging in the trees, half-burnt tents and singed blankets submerged in the sand.

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Digena Gesesew, 17, from Ethiopia, was with friends, washing some clothes in a bucket and hanging them on the fencing to dry. “The bus will leave at 8 tomorrow morning. I don’t know where we will go,” he said. “It’s very difficult.”

The French authorities declared the cleanup operation complete on Monday, but at the edges of the camp small clusters of tents remained, with people living in them. President François Hollande said an increased police presence around the camp would ensure that people were not able to return. But there were new arrivals on Monday, some from an informal camp in Paris who had come to see if they could find a space on a coach going to London.

Ben Teuten, co-founder Refugee Youth Service, a charity that has looked after minors in the Calais camp for the past year, said he was disappointed by the lack of clear information for young people.

“All the decisions have been quite poorly communicated. The children are very confused and scared. The children are left not knowing what their status is; we have a real concern that many have been given false hope when we know a lot of them won’t be going to the UK.”

He said he was worried that a lot of the children would disappear from the French children’s centres once it became clear that there was little prospect of them being transferred legally to the UK.