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“I didn’t know I could be illegal”: the policies that target rough sleepers

Recent history shows that we must remain vigilant in preventing attempts to unlawfully target and deport EU rough sleepers from the UK.

“I didn’t know I could be illegal”: the policies that target rough sleepers
The Home Office, local authorities and some homelessness charities, including St. Mungo’s and Thames Reach, targeted Europeans sleeping rough for deportation. | Philafrenzy / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). Some rights reserved.
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They came for Jiří in the middle of the night. “They pulled my blanket off me,’’ he remembers. “I was very scared and my first thought was that I was about to be killed. That was the only thought that was going through my head.”

The men told Jiří to stand up. They searched him and found his passport. Then they told him he was under arrest.