[ad_1]
A black EU citizen with permanent status was temporarily refused entry to the UK while trying to board a Eurostar train in Paris on Saturday.
Dahaba Ali Hussain, a Dutch citizen of Somali origin who has lived in London for 19 years, was on a solo holiday in France when her train arrived at Gare du Nord railway station two hours before it was due to leave for London St Pancras.
Unable to pass the hurdles for the EU queue, Hussain assumed there was a technical problem. She claims a UK Border Force officer confiscated her passport after informing her she would be subject to “further scrutiny” because she had been refused permanent status in the past.
Hussain claims she was handed a form which had already been filled out, with a box ticked stating she had been refused re-entry to the UK, and another box ticked stating she had been refused 1971 immigration. was detained under the Act.
“I was distraught,” Hussain said. “I was standing in the middle of the train station, when everyone was checking in, crying. It felt like a horror movie.”
Hussain, 29, a journalist who has written extensively on the EU settlement scheme, has previously campaigned with organisations, including 3 Million, which give a voice to EU citizens in the UK.
In the past, she is more concerned about the condition of her mother, a former refugee who fled to the Netherlands during the Somali civil war in the early 1990s.
But Hussain himself has numerous problems with settled status in the UK. She had previously been refused permanent status to stay in Britain on three separate occasions, including last year.
On Saturday, unsure of what was to come, she frantically called British MPs and former colleagues with whom she had campaigned.
“I’m more aware of this than your average citizen, and I didn’t even know what was going on,” she said.
Once a video Hussain posted on her Twitter account from Paris gained attention, Hussain claims a Border Force officer “completely changed her tune”, returned her passport and escorted her to the platform to catch her train.
“I know only one thing [the Home Office] The media responds to pressure,” she said. “I really want to get to the point where someone explains to me why, despite my full EU permanent status, my passport was taken away from me.”
I have been told that I “failed an immigration check” and had my passport confiscated @UKBorder @ukhomeoffice This is totally unacceptable! I went to Paris for a short trip and now I can’t return to my home in London despite my EU permanent status pic.twitter.com/IgQ2c2LKTU
— Dahab Ali Hussain (@dahabalihussain) December 10, 2022
Hussain also described listening to a white woman using a scan of her passport from a UK Border Force officer before requesting permission to pass, as she had left her roots in Bordeaux.
“I remember literally looking at her thinking, ‘Good luck. Are you trying to get into the club?’ However, the officer allowed the woman to pass, Hussain said.
“This is not an isolated incident,” Hussain said of her ordeal. “They do it most to people of color.”
In response to Hussain’s tweet, the In Limbo Project, which collects evidence on the impact of Brexit from EU citizens in the UK and British citizens in the EU, said: “This is not an isolated incident. thank you @dahabalihusen Now able to return home to the UK but this ordeal would not have happened if the British government had issued us all with physical proof of our immigration status.
A Home Office spokesman said: “As part of a routine security check, Ms Hussain was briefly delayed, but at no time was she told she could not travel to the UK, nor that she missed her train.
“We apologize for any inconvenience caused to Ms Hussain, but we will always prioritize the security of the country.”
[ad_2]
Source link
