CAMPAIGNERS vowed today to defy the government’s cruel Rwanda policy and the shocking mass arrests of potential deportees.

The government has launched a series of operations in recent weeks in the wake of the so-called Safety of Rwanda Bill passing through Parliament.

Asylum-seekers have been detained in raids as well as during routine appointments with Home Office authorities. 

Hundreds of protesters descended on Downing Street on Wednesday evening to demand a halt to the policy.

They were joined by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede and Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy.

A national protest against the raids and deportations has been called for June 29. 

The Safety of Rwanda Bill compels judges to regard Rwanda as safe, thereby limiting asylum-seekers’ ability to contest their deportation on that basis.

After it was passed on April 22, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed the first flight would take off within 10 to 12 weeks.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, whose party is reportedly considering a scheme that would see asylum-seekers’ claims processed elsewhere, said that under the Rwanda policy it would take 300 years to carry out all deportations.

According to the National Audit Office, the cost of the scheme costs over half-a-billion pounds.

The Home Office released a video on social media earlier this month showing the detainment of people who are due to be deported.

The arrests have prompted protests outside immigration reporting centres all over Britain, with activists mobilising to stop detention vans and coaches. 

In Solihull in the West Midlands, police arrested 13 people attempting to stop the detention of five people who had reported to routine immigration appointments. 

In south London, three were charged after protesters blocked a bus from transferring asylum-seekers to the Bibby Stockholm accommodation barge.

Stand Up To Racism co-convener Weyman Bennett said: “Sunak’s shock detention raids operation is utterly despicable.

“It is a cynical and twisted blatant attempt to get the flights off the ground as part of the Tory election campaign, which as we knew would be racist and divisive to its core.

“With the general election looming, and the government mired in crises, tensions and splits, make no mistake — racism and the politics of the gutter will be a central plank of its election campaign and will only intensify.”

Eleven charities, including Care4Calais and Calais Food Collective, which mostly work with those trapped at the Anglo-French border in northern France, have issued a joint statement denouncing the policy.

It says: “It is widely known amongst organisations in Calais, who work with people on the move daily, that these deterrent policies are not working as intended. 

“Despite the repeated failure of their efforts to reduce the numbers of people arriving at our doorstep, our governments have opted to bury their heads in the sand, pursuing and adopting ever crueller and ever more fantastical policies, causing more death and destruction in the process.” 

Calais Food Collective says that brutal conditions created to deter people from going to Britain have done the opposite, and gave the testimony of one Afghan person who goes under the pseudonym “Raza.”

They said: “We get a lot of push from the [French] government. So people are very stressed. 

“There are drones that fly over everywhere. So they treat us like we are military, and this is a war. We are afraid of everything. […] So we don’t sleep. 

“The police come in the morning and take our tent, and we don’t have a place to sleep. And we are tired, and so we will try to find a way to go to the UK.”

Kieran, an advisory committee member of Calais Food Collective, said that policies of deterrence “are symptomatic of a broader crisis of governance, where successive British and European governments seem unable to imagine any alternative to the treatment of forcibly displaced people beyond their harassment, detainment and removal.”

Care4Calais CEO Steve Smith said the Rwanda Bill “does nothing to offer protection or safety to people who have experienced the most unimaginable horrors such as torture and modern slavery. 

“In fact, government MPs shamefully voted down amendments from the House of Lords that would have exempted the victims of modern slavery from forced removal to Rwanda.”

He vowed: “We helped stop one Rwanda flight, and we will work tirelessly to do it again.”