Mr and Mrs Saeid* arrived in Islington, London, in the 1990s. As Kurdish refugees, they fled persecution in Turkey in search of a safer life. Not long after their arrival, immigration officials threatened to send them back home. As the MP for the area, I tried to appeal their deportation, but endless letters, emails, and calls fell on deaf ears. We were left with no choice but to resist their eviction directly. On the date of their scheduled deportation, a group of us went round to their flat in Finsbury Park and formed a human blockade outside their door. After a protracted confrontation with the Home Office, they eventually won their battle for the right to stay. If the Home Office had succeeded, they would have been forced to relive a life of statelessness and oppression. Instead, thanks to the kindness of strangers, they made a life for themselves, right here in Islington North.

Today, we are compelled to resist the cruelty of the Home Office once more and fight for the futures of those who will change our country for the better. This week, the Home Office launched a major operation to round up and detain asylum seekers, in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda. Across the country, mothers and fathers will think they are turning up for routine meetings, where they will be chucked into a van and transported to detention centers. Forced to languish in a cell indefinitely, they will count down the days to their removal, to be sent away like chattel, to be discarded, to be forgotten.

Coinciding with yesterday’s council elections, this is a repulsive stunt by a government that takes pride in its ambivalence to human suffering. These are people who have escaped war and persecution; it is heartbreaking that their arrival has coincided with this government’s deranged descent into full-blown barbarism. Despite repeated warnings that it is in breach of international law, the government is hell-bent on pursuing its Rwanda plan no matter the scale of human misery it will unleash. Sacrificing people’s dignity for a few votes, this latest move represents the last gasps of a dying government, determined to solidify its legacy as one that made the lives of vulnerable people even harder.