Future uncertain for child migrants living in French camp set to be dismantled
On Monday, the French government will begin demolishing a makeshift migrant camp near Calais called the "Jungle," and aid workers say there's no plan for the more than 1,300 unaccompanied children living there.
The minors have come from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and other countries, and many want to emigrate to Britain; while Britain is prioritizing children who have family already in the U.K., it is still negotiating with France where to send the kids that don't have ties to either country. "All this should have been done a long time ago," Francois Guennoc from the charity Auberge des Migrants told Reuters.
The camp is filthy with poor sanitation and makeshift living quarters, and the French government said it is being destroyed on humanitarian grounds. France wants to resettle the migrants in centers across the country while their asylum requests are being reviewed, and aid workers believe hundreds could refuse to go along with this plan; the government has said it will arrest those who won't leave the Jungle. Ali Ahmed, 24, from Sudan, told Reuters he eventually wants to end up in Britain, and he'll stay in the camp for the time being. "I have seen worse than this," he said. "And prison wouldn't be so very different from the Jungle."
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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