In a suburb of Calais there are two non -used warehouses – one yellow, one orange – that together stretch the length of a football field.
It is the most shocking place I have ever visited. Inside, packed like sardines, the filthy tents of 1500 migrants are hoping to cross the English channel as quickly as possible.
The stench of urine is unbearable: the men all only share a handful of toilets.
I meet pathetic thin prisoners – the vast majority who lives here are Sudanese – who crawl out of the tents and beg me for antibiotics and other medicines. Some have tuberculosis, hepatitis B or HIV.
“The French don't give us medication. But we know that when we come to England, we will receive them for free, “says a 38-year-old Egyptian man, who shows me his medical records on his mobile phone.
Every day at 1 p.m. a white van pops up to hand out rice and chicken declines to the migrants, who stand in line in their hundreds outside the warehouses for free food donated by a charity.
But above all, these besieged and abandoned Africans survive the hope of reaching Great Britain.
Most of them in this Hellat were thrown from Italy, which they reached from Libya by boat.
Migrants are in their tents in a former industrial warehouse near Calais, France
A group of migrants who march along a road that leads to Grande Synthe, Dunkirk. Many believe that crossing the canal to Great Britain is their best chance, in the midst of altarrangles throughout Europe
Migrants at a charity station in Calais, where a white van pops up every day at 1 p.m.
And Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tighter becomes the boundaries of her country – this week she promised that anyone who came in illegally on boats in the future would be refused the sanctuary.
“We will defend our identity: God, home country and family,” said the populist premier. “There is an ongoing process of Islamization in Europe, which is very far removed from the values of our civilization.”
In the middle of the warehouse there is a space between the crush of tents. It is a prayer area, with a dozen copies of the Koran in a neat pile and a carpet in Arabic style on the floor. Here the migrants worship – almost all Muslim – every Friday.
Few, even among the inhabitants of Calais, know that the men live here.
Since the migrants have never taken pictures since the migrants took over the place last fall.
Only after the post had gone there this week and the migrants offered a few packs of cigarettes and chocolate bars in which we were invited.
Meloni is not alone in wanting to stop the migrant crisis that is wiping Europe with its cultural and economic consequences. The same mood of hostility is widespread in Germany and Sweden, which without a doubt welcomed asylum seekers ten years ago.
A rubber boat with around 65 migrants crossing the English canal last March
The stench of urine in the warehouse is unbearable. Few from Calais know that the tent city even exists
About the Atlantic Ocean, the new administration of Donald Trump began to collect illegal immigrants and back to their home countries in Latin -America.
In Britain, however, the government of Keir Starmer scraped the most important deterrent of the Tory government – the risk that migrants would be sent to be processed for asylum in Rwanda – and has not replaced it.
More than 24,000 have been traded on the channel on boats since the birth came to power last summer, and the home office has reserved more than £ 500 million to manage and care for newcomers for the next decade.
Along the coast in Dunkirk, a 17-year-old Afghan called Albert, tells me that he lived in Sweden for three months, but was ordered to leave three weeks ago.
“Stockholm refused me asylum,” he says in good English. 'I couldn't go anywhere else than here – to reach the UK on a boat. I can't return to Afghanistan. Every migrant in Europe now thinks Great -Britain is his best chance. '
I heard from a man in the twenty from Kurdistan deported from Germany after three years, living in a refugee house in North France, waiting for a boat to England. “He speaks German, regards himself as settled and is shocked by the cruelty of what happened,” one of his friends told me.
I also learned the fate of Iraqi asylum seekers Mohammed, Nour and their four children, who were detained in France last year after Germany had deported them.
In an interview just before the general elections of Great Britain, they said they were homeless in Dunkirk, and that they could not go anywhere except Great -Britain -and there would be in the boat of a human dealer.
A 21-year-old Sudanese man who controls his tent in the abandoned warehouse
A Sudanese national who brushes his teeth in the garden of the warehouse
This week the Facebook page of the family showed a new photo of a red London bus on Westminster Bridge at the houses of the Parliament.
“They are happy to be in England. They were about the canal, “one of their friends explained this week. “They quickly got their British asylum.” Today, thousands are waiting in the northern French port cities.
In Dunkirk on Tuesday I watched a group of 80 Iraqis, Kurds and Afghans, with full shopping bags and with a few of their children who held cuddly toys, walk along a busy street to take a bus to the beach for a boat To the United Kingdom.
Back in Calais, in the warehouses, I talk to Hamza Ibrahem, 26, from Sudan. He tells me: 'There are 1500 of us here, almost all from Sudan and the neighboring South Sudan. We all came to Italy from Libya. When Italy turned their back on us, we traveled here, because Great -Britain is our last and only hope. '
His countryman, Ismail Mohammed, 27, arrived in Italy from Libya two years ago. He was deported there and put in prison.
Somehow he came to Italy again last year. “The Italians didn't want me or Africans. I have no friends or family in Europe. I couldn't go anywhere. So I left, “he says.
'I did what most Sudanese do: I came to Calais. I tried to jump to England six times on trucks. I would buy a place on a boat if I had the money. I am lonely in France. My only hope now is to reach London, where I have a cousin. '
A migrant (depicted, left) prays in the warehouse, where a rug in Arabic style is spread over the floor
Ismail, the son of a market trader in Sudan, is a polite young man. He tries to learn English better and carefully guides me through the tightly packed melee of tents while we chat.
'My family does not know that I live in France like that. I don't tell them how bad it is. It would upset them.
'If I go to England and I get a room in a hotel, I will be proud. I will say the truth to my father. I will continue to study as a computer engineer in your country, “he adds.
For the time being, Ismail and other residents of this miserable wild growth of tents spend their days plan how to cross the 21 miles from the sea to reach the white cliffs of Dover. Throwed by a once hospitable – some would say naive – Europe, they count on the wide open doors of Great Britain to save them.
