In Calais, migrants are once again roaming the streets

Many of the illegal aliens from a camp in Calais that was evacuated last week are already back, waiting for a chance to cross over to England.

Bertrand Legros, 35, was leaning against the gate in front of his house in Calais. He was angry. “Send them all back in a plane without an engine,” he said.

Behind the gate his wife Véronique (26) stroked their black pitbull. She nodded as her husband continued: "We have to pay for a dog-licence fee and all sorts of things. But that motley crew gets pampered. They make the place unsafe, they shit in public, the dog even got mange from it. Our own homeless aren't given so much as a blanket, you know, not even in winter.” And he repeated, three times: “We’ve been let down.”

The Jungle

Calm has returned to the street where the Legros live near the port of the northern French town of Calais. Just a hundred metres further along, 'The Jungle', an improvised camp of illegal immigrants, was evacuated last Tuesday with the international press looking on.

The evacuation by five hundred riot police had been announced a week earlier by the French minister for immigration, Eric Besson. He cited the lawlessness to which the camp’s name was a reference and the need to deprive human traffickers of their main territory. He also pointed out how untenable the situation had become for the residents of Calais and how appalling the lack of hygiene was at the camp.

Not everyone was convinced. Martine Aubry, leader of the opposition Socialist Party, said shutting down the camp was “inhumane.”

“Inhumane? The camp was inhumane,” said a woman in the street next to that of Bertrand Legros. "Sometimes I found rats in the house. You can be sure that it wandered in from over there. People went to the toilet all over the place, they left food scraps everywhere.” The woman didn’t want to give her name. “Before you know it you have a swastika on your wall.”

Six-degree weather

Unlike many others in the town the woman never helped the immigrants. “That would just make them keep coming.” But suddenly her eyes welled up. “It was terrible in winter. Children sitting in six-degree weather at the roadside, holding their wrists up. Begging to be cuffed. I have children of my own: it gives me goose-bumps just thinking about it."

A little further along, the four hectares of former ‘Jungle’ looked at least as tragic as they did when the shantytown built from pieces of plastic and blankets still stood. Remnants of canvas covered the piles of rubbish in blue. Even the trees where the illegal immigrants stretched their tarpaulines were uprooted and shuffled onto a pile by the bulldozers. A riot policeman standing on a nearby sand hill had no objection to being photographed and filmed. A French cameraman sneered: "They want us to document their so-called success. This whole action was entirely aimed at giving people the feeling that something is being done."

Until Besson’s announcement The Jungle housed eight hundred people. Most did not wait for the arrival of the riot police. The police arrested 276 people, most of whom have since been released.

Ongoing cycle

The Jungle was the largest of the six migrant camps in Calais. The influx of illegal aliens started at the end of the nineties with Kosovars; now most of the aliens here are Afghans and Iraqis. They come here because of Calais' geographic proximity to Britain.

Today’s camps were created when a much larger camp managed by the Red Cross in the neighbouring village of Sangatte was closed down in 2002. Abandoned hangars there provided shelter to some two thousand illegal immigrants. It was closed on orders of the current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was the interior minister at the time, for the same reasons cited by Besson this time around.

Critics have sneered that Besson is now fighting the consequences of his boss’s earlier decision. They also point out that the closures are part of an ongoing cycle. ‘Sangatte’ was in fact set up because Calais was inundated with illegal immigrants at the time.

Philippe Wannesson, a volunteer from the aid organisation Salam, sat amidst Palestinians, Iraqis and Sudanese on the covered platform of an abandoned factory next to the port. Blankets, plastic and discarded couches were used to erect a camp here as well. It was left untouched in last week’s action.

A show of muscle

Wannesson – dirty T-shirt, dreadlocks and a thick unruly beard – said in a soft voice: “Before the week is out everyone from the jungle will be back. A hundred people at most were picked up. It's all just a show of muscle.”

In fact just one day after evacuation it already seemed like most people were back. Groups of young men could be seen everywhere. They smelled unwashed. They evaded questions. Some had their fingertips burned off to avoid being sent back to Greece, the country by which they entered the EU.

An abandoned windowless house near the Place du Norvège has been home to ten Sudanese and Somalis since the evacuation of ‘The Jungle.’ The floors of the damp and draughty ruin were black with caked dirt. The place was littered with broken mattresses, clothing, a tin of soup here, a trampled package of flour there, alongside boxes of fresh vegetables, tomatoes, bread and bananas from the Secours Catholique, a local NGO.

'Holland, Holland!'

Israel, a 25-year-old Sudanese man, told in broken English how he trekked through the desert for thirty days to Libya, "fleeing the war in my country", and took a boat from there to Italy. He had to pay five hundred dollars for each leg of the journey. Two days ago he tried to cross over to England. He was picked up, but he said he would try again in two days’ time.

At half past six in the evening a hundred young men, most of them from Afghanistan, were sitting on the platform of an empty factory, waiting for the volunteers from Salam to start distributing food. Someone trying to push to the front was immediately reprimanded by Daniel Agneray, a volunteer.

“Emotions flare up easily when the last 30 kilometres of a 6,000-kilometre journey prove somewhat difficult," said Agneray. "They will all manage it in the end, no matter what the government says. Otherwise they wouldn't be here. Three or four thousand euros and you are guaranteed to make it to the other side. Don't ask me how, or how they get the money. I wish them well: we bomb them at home and then they get knocked around here as well. It is a disgrace.”

Saho, a dirty and dishevelled-looking Somali who seemed much older than the 19 years he claimed to be, greedily slurped his rice with chicken and carrot. He pulled his torn red sweater in front of his face to avoid being photographed. He couldn't write his name and only spoke a few words of English - and one word of heavily accented Dutch. Saho wanted to go to "Holland! Holland!" With a big smile he added: "House! Money! Outkering! (benefits)."