“I just need to work as soon as possible,” he says. “I speak English. I can go to the U.K. and find a job quickly.” This is one of his key motivations for wanting to move to England: Having to learn German or French, he explains, means more time before he can get back to work. And like thousands of others living in the Jungle, he thinks the U.K. will give him the best chance at a new life.

To get there, he will have to sneak in illegally, either on his own or with help. International law holds that people may apply for asylum at any country’s borders, embassies or once inside, even if they entered clandestinely. But European Union law grants refugees asylum only in the first European nation they step foot in. For him and many others, that was Greece, a country with few economic prospects, especially for a foreigner who doesn’t speak Greek.

Halabi is interrupted midsentence by the sounds of yelling and crackling, like far-off fireworks. He finishes his tea and pushes his way through the hanging rug that passes for the restaurant’s door. Outside, the stench of tear gas hangs in the damp coastal air.

“It’s too early. They always go too early,” he yells, pointing to the highway that runs alongside the Jungle to the port and tunnel. The highway is dotted with blue-lit police vans, flanked by two sets of barbed wire fences, and it is on fire.

Residents of the Jungle sometimes set large fires in the highway to stop traffic so they can jump in the back of trucks headed for England. Halabi quips that there are cultural differences in strategies among the Jungle’s residents: The Afghans tend to try earlier in the evening, while the Syrians prefer to go in the hours before dawn. The differences are also economic — Syrians in the Jungle, he says, are often able to pay a smuggler to take them to the U.K., while others typically make attempts on their own.

The French riot police, known as the CRS, are permanently stationed outside the encampment and often use tear gas and rubber bullets to fend off groups of people heading toward the highway. On the last night I met with Halabi, I watched the CRS lob tear gas canisters into the camp and, in two instances, shoot them directly at Jungle residents. The CRS does not comment on its tactics, but protocol holds that at close range, officers must bounce tear gas canisters off the ground and not shoot directly at people.

Stowing away to England used to be easier, Halabi says. Until recently there were three main parking lots in Calais where trucks stopped while waiting for the ferries, and people could sneak aboard them to get to England. Then last summer, the U.K. government pledged $11 million for new fences, scanners and surveillance equipment, and the French government increased the number of CRS officers stationed in the area. That hasn’t stopped people from crossing via the parking lots, he says. Now you just have to go through a smuggler.

“Now all is run by the mafia. If you go [to the lots] without paying, they’ll kill you,” he says.