LONDON (Reuters) -- Housed in a detention centre in southern England, Aladeen says he risked his life to travel thousands of miles from his homeland of Syria.
Now the 21-year-old is battling to stay in Britain and avoid being sent across the world again, this time to Rwanda where the British government wants to send migrants who turn up illegally on its shores.
“It’s the end of the world for me, I can’t imagine it,” he told Reuters by phone through an interpreter and declining to give his full name while his asylum claim is considered.
Aladeen, one of about 130 migrants initially given a ticket to Rwanda and now left in legal limbo, is caught in the British government’s struggle to control its borders and manage voters’ post-Brexit migration demands.
He is among more than 20,000 migrants to have made the precarious 20-mile journey from France to Britain this year on small boats across the English Channel, crossing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.
The status of migrants like Aladeen will be the subject of a legal challenge in London’s High Court in early September when a coalition of human rights groups and a trade union will argue that the Rwanda policy is unworkable and unethical.
Britain is the latest country to attempt to outsource the settlement of asylum seekers.
It has portrayed the policy as humane, but the country has attracted widespread criticism while the European Court of Human Rights issued injunctions to force the cancellation of the first deportation flight hours before it was due to leave in June.
So far Rwanda has also only set up one hostel to accept UK arrivals, with capacity for about 100 people, representing 0.35% of all the migrants who arrived in Britain last year.
Britain argues that 90% of the asylum seekers who make the journey are men, many of them economic migrants rather than genuine refugees.
On arrival in Britain, Aladeen was taken to a holding facility before being moved to a detention centre.
“I feel I am being treated like a criminal. I am not a criminal, all I am doing is looking to settle and start a new life,” he said.
Asked what he would do if sent to Rwanda, he said: “I’m not sure - my life is ended.”