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\n 19\/08\/2025 – 20:22 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
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A hotel near London that has become the focus of heated\u00a0anti-immigrant protests\u00a0in recent weeks will have to remove asylum seekers who are staying there after authorities won a legal bid on Tuesday to have them removed.<\/p>\n
Officials from the Epping Forest District Council asked a judge to issue an order to temporarily block migrants from being accommodated at the Bell Hotel in Epping due to “unprecedented levels of protest and disruption” over asylum seeker accommodation.<\/p>\n
Thousands of people, some chanting “save our kids” and “send them home,” have protested near the hotel after an asylum seeker living there was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl.<\/p>\n
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu has denied the charges against him and is due to stand trial later this month.<\/p>\n
The protests, which included local people as well as some members of organised far-right groups began peacefully but turned violent. At least nine people were arrested in connection with the demonstrations.<\/p>\n
Anti-racism demonstrators also staged\u00a0counter-protests outside the hotel and at other sites.<\/p>\n
Philip Coppel, a lawyer for local officials in Epping, said the hotel’s housing of asylum-seekers had provided a “feeding ground for unrest” and community tensions.<\/p>\n
A High Court judge ruled on Tuesday that the hotel must stop housing asylum-seekers by 12 September but it wasn’t immediately clear where the migrants would be moved to.<\/p>\n
Last summer, days of\u00a0anti-immigrant riots rocked towns and cities across England and Northern Ireland, triggered by the\u00a0killing of three young girls\u00a0at a summer dance class in Southport.<\/p>\n
Crowds in more than two dozen towns attacked hotels housing migrants, as well as mosques, police stations and a library, driven partly by online misinformation claiming the attacker was a migrant who had arrived in the UK by small boat.<\/p>\n
Some rioters targeted non-white people and threw bricks and fireworks at police.<\/p>\n
Tensions have long simmered over the government’s policy of using hundreds of hotels across the country to house migrants who are awaiting a decision on their asylum status.<\/p>\n
Critics say it costs taxpayers millions of pounds, the hotels become flashpoints in communities and leave migrants feeling targeted by local residents.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 19\/08\/2025 – 20:22 GMT+2 ADVERTISEMENT A hotel near London that has become the focus of heated\u00a0anti-immigrant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[125912,2527,748,393,1105,4884,5805,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-357686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-anti-immigrant","10":"tag-asylum-seekers","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-far-right","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-migrants","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115057436492015351","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}