The New Dark Age

Thursday, 2 May 2024 — Institute of Race Relations

As our calendar of racism and resistance shows, within days of the passage of the Safety of Rwanda Act, which received Royal Assent last week, and days before local elections in England, the Home Office began detaining asylum seekers as they arrived for routine immigration bail appointments and rounding them up nationwide in immigration raids, as if they were public enemies – which the government tries to pretend they are – and protesters against the Act, demonstrating outside immigration centres are being arrested too. No wonder increasing numbers of terrified asylum seekers are fleeing from Britain to Ireland, whose supreme court has ruled that since the Rwanda deal, the UK is no longer a safe country to which asylum seekers can be returned.

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