Aid groups say several hundred people, half of them unaccompanied children, have returned to area around French port

The number of refugees in and around Calais is beginning to build up again, five months after the “Jungle” camp was demolished. Aid groups report several hundred new arrivals in recent weeks, around half of them unaccompanied minors.

“Eritreans and Sudanese are everywhere along the seafront with no welcome centre,” said Amin Trouvé-Baghdouche of Doctors of the World. “They are wandering about, abandoned by the state. Half of them are teenagers of about 15-17 years old, without their families.”

Aid workers say groups of refugees have rebuilt small camps in the woods. “Afghans have rebuilt well-hidden areas where they sleep,” said one humanitarian worker, adding that Africans, most of them very young, slept for a few hours hidden in thickets before being dislodged by the police, and took refuge during the day in the premises of the Secours Catholique, the only place where they can go between 9am and 5pm.

Aid groups put the total number of refugees at between 400 and 500. Their reappearance raises questions over French efforts to deal effectively with the problem of refugees and migrants amassing Calais, many with a view to trying to cross into Britain on lorries. As many as 10,000 people lived in the camp before it was dismantled in November.

“It feels like we have gone back three years to April 2014 when there were 300 or 400 migrants in Calais,” said Gilles Debove, a local police officer. “We have resumed patrols, handing out food, questioning and finding shelter for minors, but it doesn’t do any good.”

He says children can still be found all along the port ring road at 2am, and the job is a bit like “emptying the barrel of the Danaides”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Volunteers give out food in Calais last month. Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

Jean-Marc Puissesseau, chief executive of the port authority, agreed that it felt like the clocks had been turned back a couple of years, and said the authorities needed to keep a close eye on the situation to stop it escalating. The new regional leader, Fabien Sudry, has vowed that there should be “no permanent sites, no squats, no reconstitution of the Jungle” and noted that a unique 500-strong force is policing the area.

The vast Calais migrant camp was dismantled last November, and thousands of people were moved to processing centres across France. Local authorities in Calais have insisted they will not allow a new camp to re-emerge. At one point the mayor, Natacha Bouchart, even tried to ban food distribution, but a regional court struck down the measure.

“It’s really something to be reduced to celebrating because the authorities have allowed you to feed kids who live outside,” said Vincent Coninck, of the Secours Catholique humanitarian aid group. “We are going back to the time after Sangatte (a previous refugee camp which was shut in 2002) only with a bigger dose of police harassment.”

“Opinion formers are becoming opinion followers and have capitulated to the Front National and no longer dare to set a lead,” he said, adding that the whole culture of asylum had been dismantled at the same time as the “Jungle” camp.

France’s rights ombudsman, Jacques Toubon, recently decried the fact that support for migrants had fallen to levels not seen in decades. He rebuked the authorities for “not just not providing enough resources for basic human dignity to be protected, but also forbidding civil society from making good these inadequacies”.

Frédéric Van Gansbeke, president of the Calais trade federation, was scathing about the failure to adopt “the least bad solution” – the establishment of a proper camp in line with UN standards in the Calais region.

“The Calais people don’t have the patience they had two years ago,” he said, adding that feelings were running far higher than in the past. “None of the candidates in [this month’s] presidential election is offering anything that stands up for the migration question.”

Politics may indeed be playing a role in Calais. In 2015, the Front National won almost 50% of the vote here in regional elections. Its candidate, Marine Le Pen, is currently neck and neck with her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron to win the first round vote on 23 April.

This article was translated from the original as part of the new arrivals partnership. The original article in French can be found here.