Refugees target Cherbourg port as security tightens at Calais
Syrians and Afghans find new route to try to sneak on to trucks en route to England or Ireland
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/12192947/Refugees-target-Cherbourg-port-as-security-tightens-at-Calais.htmlBy Rory Mulholland, Cherbourg
8:00AM GMT 14 Mar 2016
The bewildered young Afghan stepped off the 3:19 train from Paris. Speaking no French or English, and unable to provide any ID, he was taken straight into custody by the two policemen posted at Cherbourg station to intercept migrants.
But he will likely be released within hours, and will go to join the growing number of refugees flocking to this ferry port on their way to Britain as security grows ever tighter in Calais, 300 miles to the east, and the demolition of the notorious Jungle camp there continues.
Since the start of the year, there have been more than 400 attempts by migrants to sneak on to ships in Cherbourg bound for England or Ireland.
That is twice the number of attempts for the whole of 2015, according to the most senior state official in the region.
Many more may head there from Calais in the coming weeks as French authorities continue the demolition of half of the squalid Jungle, which is home to up to 7,000 migrants.
“I think we are going to see a wave of migrants in Cherbourg,” said Guillaume Ingouf, a social worker, who works with refugees in this Normandy town where France’s current interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, was mayor before he rose in the ranks of the ruling Socialist party.
Mr Ingouf said many of the migrants he helped were in Calais before heading to Cherbourg, where they hoped to sneak into the backs of trucks heading by ferry to Rosslare and Dublin in Ireland, or Poole and Portsmouth in England.
The Église Sainte Marie Madeleine Postel serves as a makeshift shelter for about one hundred migrantsThe Église Sainte Marie Madeleine Postel serves as a makeshift shelter for about one hundred migrants Photo: Guilhem Baker for The Telegraph
A group of about 100 migrants hoping to make that crossing live in a draughty and semi-derelict disused church - the Église Sainte Marie Madeleine Postel - in a residential area of the town of 80,000 people.
On Thursday, a group of seven Syrians sat around a table in the church, sharing a meal of tinned tuna and bread in the middle of blankets and clothes strewn across the floor beneath smashed stained glass windows.
All said they had tried their luck in Calais before heading to Cherbourg. Some pulled up their sleeves or trouser legs to show scars or bruises they said they got in Calais from police beatings or from falling off trucks or fences as they sought to make their way to what they believe would be a better life in the UK.
“Calais was too difficult,” said one man who gave his name as Mohamed and said he was from the Syrian town of Daraa. “I couldn’t get to England from there because security was too good. And then the police smashed my tent and I came here.”
