I have visited Calais many times. On each occasion, I learn more about the meaning of human resilience. Having fled the horrors of war, environmental disaster, and destitution, refugees in Calais have gone through hell in search of a place of safety. Upon arrival, their search goes on. Children beg for water, contaminated by feces. Rats scurry into people’s muddied tents. Mothers cry for the futures their sons and daughters could have had. Evictions are carried out daily by the French authorities; tents, blankets, identity papers, mobile phones, clothes, and medicines are confiscated or destroyed.

Those who arrive on our shores are not “boat people.” They are human beings, exercising their legal right to asylum. As Warsan Shire writes in her poem Home, “no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” Imagine living in the conditions I’ve described. Imagine, then, risking your life to make it across the channel. And imagine ending up in a hotel, looking out the window, and seeing a crowd of people shouting at you to “go home.”

In the last month, we’ve witnessed a series of protests outside hotels that are being used to accommodate asylum seekers. Among the protesters were placards reading, “Mass deportations now,” a call that Reform UK’s Nigel Farage has now echoed. Many of us have seen the harrowing images in the United States of people being snatched off the streets by officers. It is, frankly, terrifying to think that such authoritarian cruelty could soon be coming to the UK.