Fresh protests outside UK hotels housing asylum seekers

EPPING: Hundreds of protesters gathered again Sunday outside a hotel in southern England at the focus of a legal battle over migrants, calling for foreign criminals to be deported.
The Bell Hotel in Epping, northeast London, became a flashpoint for protests in July after an asylum seeker staying there was charged with sexual assault for attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. The man charged has denied the allegation.
The demonstrations have since spread to other parts of Britain, at times turning violent.
The latest protests, at Epping and elsewhere in England, come two days after an appeal court overturned a lower court ruling that had temporarily blocked the use of the Bell Hotel to house asylum-seekers.
On Sunday evening, hundreds of people gathered outside the hotel again, calling for the removal of asylum seekers housed there.
“Send them home, please protect me,” read one T-shirt worn by a young girl. A boy held up a sign saying “Deport foreign criminals.”
Several protesters waved Union Jacks and English flags.
Immigration policy
A bitter national debate over immigration policy has been raging in the UK, amid growing frustration over the continued arrival of small boats carrying migrants across the Channel from France.
The asylum-seeker charged with having tried to kiss a minor is a 38-year-old Ethiopian, who had arrived in England just days earlier after crossing the Channel in a small boat.
More than 50,000 migrants have made the dangerous Channel crossing from northern France since the Labour Party’s Keir Starmer became prime minister in July 2024.
Epping Council had initially secured a temporary court order banning the use of the Bell Hotel to house asylum seekers, but an appeals court in London overturned that ruling on Friday.
Also Sunday, around a hundred demonstrators gathered in support of asylum seekers outside a hotel in London’s Canary Wharf district.
Counter-protesters opposing immigration also attended the demonstration.
London’s Metropolitan Police later reported that “a small number of masked protesters… became aggressive toward members of the public and police,” adding that officers had arrested four people.
On Saturday, five people were also arrested after a group of masked men attempted to enter a hotel housing asylum seekers near Heathrow Airport.
As of the end of June, more than 32,000 asylum seekers were being accommodated in just over 200 hotels across the UK.
The Labour government has pledged to end the use of hotels for asylum accommodation by 2029, citing high costs.