The Lockdown gives asylum seekers reprieve and hope for change in policy
As Britain takes its first small steps out of lockdown, there is one group of people quietly wishing that it wouldn’t. For many asylum seekers, the two-month hiatus has meant reprieve. Freed from detention centres, liberated from the threat of imminent deportation and no longer obliged to report to the Home Office, many have welcomed the relief. And all this at a time when the general population have learned something of what it is like to live with severe curbs on civil liberties. I know it sounds bad to say, but I felt like coronavirus should not go,” says Maimuna Jawo, a Gambian asylum seeker and female genital mutilation campaigner who had to report to the Home Office once a month before March. “My fear now is that normal life will resume and I’ll have to start reporting again.” Before lockdown, Jawo was under orders to report to Eaton House immigration enforcement centre in Hounslow, west London, on the first Wednesday of every month. The preceding nights were always sleepless. “I...