His message came after news that the UK Government is planning to deport Syrian asylum seekers back to the country as a “priority” – despite safety concerns raised by stakeholders, including Labour’s own Middle East minister.

A few days later, I am sitting with Fadi and his wife, Lojain, in their Glasgow flat. He is studying at university and has the day off, while she volunteers teaching digital skills and Arabic and is due at class that afternoon. Their kids are at school up the road.

Fadi Alsakka with his wife Lojain and children Ayman and Ayla (Image: Supplied)

After months in an asylum hotel, the Home Office allocated the young family their own place. Finding bare walls on arrival, they have since put up some small decorations: fairy lights, children’s pictures on the walls, artwork above the dining table.

“I put some simple touches to feel [like] home,” Lojain says. “But it’s not. It’s just a peel or layer.”

While the family have settled into life in Glasgow and say they would like to stay for good, the knowledge that everything could be taken away at the stroke of a pen is preventing them from truly feeling at home.

For Chafik Kazkaz, another Syrian asylum seeker now living with his wife Shaima and three kids in a different part of Glasgow, the news of planned deportations to Syria sparked “panic”.

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“Every day, I wake up in the early morning, I just search my emails. ‘Maybe there’s some email I didn’t see’,” Chafik says.

“It’s so much stress. I don’t know what to do. I don’t have like a Plan B.

“Even my lawyer said we just wait, we can’t do anything. It feels like a hopeless situation. We can’t do anything.”

Chafik, like Fadi and Lojain, believe that Syrian people are being used as a “political tool”.

“The UK Government, they could have fears that if we grant Syrians asylum, the [acceptance] rate will be high,” Fadi says. “‘The Reform Party will get this data and use it to oppose us’.

“But we don’t want to be in the middle of this game.

“Have some humanity, listen to people, talk to people, review your policy.”

Former terrorist Ahmed al-Sharaa is now the president of Syria (Image: Khalil Ashawi, REUTERS)

The Home Office’s shift comes after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, after the presidency was taken by Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda militant who went on to found the Al-Nusra Front and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terror groups.

Al-Sharaa’s HTS was de-proscribed by the UK Government in October 2025 – just three months before the Home Office confirmed it would look to deport people to the country the group now runs.

For Chafik, the change has been superficial. “Actually, the regime is still the same,” he says. “What’s changed is the head.

“It’s still the same way, the same secret prisons, the same bad treatment. It’s OK to be a thief, to be a killer, but it’s not OK to be against the government.

“You are just numbers. Any time, they can take you from your work, from your house, and nobody knows where you are. You have no right to ask. Ten years, 20 years. You have no right to know.

“Many, many families don’t know what happened to their members. But many families know the one who killed their relative, and they’re still free. Can you imagine that?

“Some of them recycle now and become a member of the new government – the same people with the same bad history.”

Chafik Kazkaz with his wife Shaima, and their three children: Ahmad, Habib, and Hashem (Image: Supplied)

Fadi and Lojain have a less fearful view of the new government – but not of the security situation in Syria.

“Let’s say, it’s better now in terms of, nobody will come to you without reason and attack you,” Fadi says.

“Nobody from the government,” Lojain cuts in. “They put this in the news, like Ahmed Al-Sharra handshaking with some leader, and everything is fine now. ‘You can go back to Syria. It’s fine.’ This is not the case.”

“You will be targeted by gangs, you’ll be targeted by other people who have interest in you or your money or your family,” Fadi agrees.

“I will not say that they are killing people randomly on the street, no, but if you have specific interests for these gangs, you could be targeted. Whether for your money, for your religion, for politics, you could be targeted.”

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A Catch-22 emerges from a fear shared by all three: that simply having tried to claim asylum in Europe is enough for gangs to target returnees, assuming they are wealthy.

There is also a second trap. While the Home Office says it will not deport people with refugee status, many Syrians do not have that status because of delays imposed by the Home Office.

Fadi and his family were left waiting for two years after their first asylum interview without any updates – even through a total pause of Syrian claims brought in after the country’s change of government.

“It was crazy when, after six hours of the Assad regime fall, they stopped the asylum cases,” Fadi laughs. “They were very fast in that process – six hours!”

Despite being a dentist by trade – a highly skilled job needed in Scotland – Chafik and his family have also experienced lengthy silences from the UK Government during their almost two years in the Home Office system. He describes the asylum seeker label as “like a curse”.

“Nothing happened after the September 15,” Chafik says, referencing the date of his second asylum interview. “From time to time, if I have some certificate from a workshop, from volunteering, a statement from somebody, I just send it to them with no response.

“I mean, what do I have to do? I don’t know. You want me to work? I can work. You want me to study? I study already. You want me to volunteer? I volunteer with many organisations.

“What do I have to do to stay here, to continue my life here as a good citizen?”

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has signalled a tougher approach to asylum (Image: PA)

All three give the same answer when asked what they would do if forced to return to Syria: they will not go.

“If your house is destroyed, your nearest hospital is destroyed, your nearest school is destroyed, you don’t have a job there, you don’t have an income, you don’t have any assets, you don’t have relationships, you don’t have relatives, how are you expecting people to come back?” Fadi asks.

“You are forcing people to death.”

As the conversation centres on possible forced deportations, Lojain has to wipe away tears. “If you ask [my children], we ask them a lot, they will say no, we don’t want to go, especially to Syria.”

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So if it comes to it, will the family try to claim asylum elsewhere? “There is no other way,” she says. “For Syrians, there is no other way.”

But where would they go? “We don’t know. We don’t know.”

A Home Office spokesperson said that the Government is “obliged to offer sanctuary to those who would be in danger if they returned to their country of origin”.

“However, should the conditions change in their home country, our approach should change too.

“As outlined in the Asylum Policy Statement, we are exploring resuming enforced returns to countries where we have not routinely carried out such removals in recent years, including to Syria.”