For the past year and a half the Home Office has been locking up EU citizens en masse, indefinitely and without charge. If this attack on civil liberties has escaped your attention, it’s probably because the people affected are homeless.

Home Office policy to deport EU rough sleepers ruled unlawful Read more

Since the Brexit vote, the pro-remain media has been full of trepidation about how life will change once Britain leaves the EU in 2019 – and the impact on EU residents living in the UK. But the nightmare scenario – Brexit as a bonfire of social and legal protections – has already been a reality for many EU migrants in the UK.

Since May 2016, immigration enforcement teams have been targeting migrants who sleep rough using intelligence provided by local councils, the police, and, most shockingly, some homelessness charities, including St Mungo’s and Thames Reach.

That has had a real impact on some homeless people. One Polish man caught up in a raid in north London told us how he felt that some homeless charities were not to be trusted. “They pretend to help people,” he said, “but actually they gather information for the Home Office.”

It’s not charities’ job to aid deportations | Lola Okolosie Read more

Rough sleepers from the EU have had their documents confiscated and told they have 28 days to “go home”. Others have been held in detention centres pending administrative removal. Britain is the only country in the EU that allows indefinite immigration detention, so some homeless people have been incarcerated for months while they try to prove their right of residence.

The high court’s ruling on 14 December that the Home Office’s policy of detaining and deporting rough sleepers from the European Economic Area is unlawful is the culmination of a year of campaigning by the Public Interest Law Unit at Lambeth Law Centre and the organisation I work with, North East London Migrant Action.

It feels like a depressing sign of the times that it took a court order to put a stop to such an obviously callous policy.

Anyone who thinks sleeping rough is a “choice” should spend a month at the sharp end of the UK labour market

The Home Office said the policy targeted migrants who came to the UK “with the intention of sleeping rough” and were thus abusing their right to free movement. This version of events has been rejected by the European Commission and the charity Crisis. Most of the homeless Europeans we support have lived in Britain for years. Some have British children. They are often skilled workers who have fallen on hard times.

Anyone who thinks sleeping rough is a “choice” should spend a month at the sharp end of the UK labour market. Zero-hours contracts, rising rents and radical welfare cuts have not just created a new class of working poor; they’ve created a class of working people who become homeless. One man was detained while camping in a tent, despite showing the Home Office proof of employment. On zero-hours contracts, he and his partner simply couldn’t earn enough to rent a flat.

Homelessness charities that share information with the Home Office claim they are acting in the “best interests” of rough sleepers by helping them return home. The testimonies we’ve gathered from EU rough sleepers speak against such careless paternalism. Spending months in Yarl’s Wood is not in anyone’s best interests. The man detained for sleeping rough spent 26 days in detention. “I saw women fainting and falling down,” he said. “I had money on my credit card and wanted to buy food and cigarettes, but they wouldn’t let me. We had to live on 71p a day. I felt like killing myself.”

The High Court’s ruling is not just a judgment on the hostile environment created by the Home Office. It’s an indictment of a political class that views incarceration and deportation as a solution to the social problems caused by rampant inequality.

If someone is sleeping rough they need help – not deportation | Dawn Foster Read more

Right-wing media coverage of our challenge argued that the Home Office’s policy reduced rough sleeping. Such logic is chilling. Reducing homelessness by deporting the homeless “works” only in the same way that reducing the benefits bill by leaving disabled people destitute “works”.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some rough sleepers removed from the UK have later died on the streets in their country of origin. Being homeless is not a crime. Freedom of movement is not just for the rich. Such patent truths shouldn’t need repeating, but — now more than ever — they do.

David Jones is an activist with North East London Migrant Action.

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