At the Conservative Party Conference earlier this month, then-home secretary Suella Braverman spoke of her “dream” of overseeing the deportation of asylum-seekers to Rwanda. Today, two days after her resignation, the plan has been dealt a fresh blow, after the airline due to run the deportation flights pulled out amid pressure from campaigners.
Whether the government will persist with its £120m plan – which has already been stalled by legal challenges – remains to be seen, particularly in the wake of the resignation of Liz Truss as prime minister. Earlier this year, during the last Tory party leadership race, Braverman's successor as home secretary, Grant Shapps, told LBC he would “make sure it happens”.
With the plan, and the government, once again in disarray, openDemocracy spoke to one of the more than a thousand refugees to have already been housed in Rwanda since 2019, as part of a UN evacuation scheme for people trapped in Libya.
