A black EU national with stable status temporarily denied entry to the UK | European Union

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A black European Union citizen in settled status was temporarily denied entry to the UK when she tried to board a Eurostar train in Paris on Saturday.

Dahaba Ali Hussein, a Dutch national of Somali descent who has lived in London for 19 years, was on a solo holiday in France when she arrived at the Gare du Nord railway station two hours before her train to London St Pancras was due to set off.

Unable to get past the barriers to the EU queue, Hussain assumed there was a technology problem. She alleges that a BSF officer she then approached confiscated her passport after telling her she would be subject to “further checks” because she had been denied stable status in the past.

Hussain claims to have received a form already filled out, with a box written on it saying she has been banned from returning to the UK, and another box written saying she is being held under the Immigration Act 1971.

“I felt afraid,” Hussein said. “I was standing in the middle of the train station, while everyone was checking in crying. It felt like a horror movie.”

The 29-year-old Hussain, a journalist who has written extensively about the EU settlement plan, has previously campaigned with organizations including the3million, which gives a voice to EU citizens in the UK.

In the past, she worried more about the situation of her mother, a former refugee who fled to the Netherlands during the Somali civil war in the early 1990s.

But Hussain herself faced many problems with her stable position in the UK. She had previously been refused settled status to live in Britain on three separate occasions, including last year.

On Saturday, uncertain of what was to come, she made frantic calls to British MPs and former colleagues with whom she had campaigned.

“I know more about this than your average citizen,” she said, “and even I didn’t know what was going on.”

Once a video that Hussain posted to her Twitter account from Paris began to gain traction, Hussain claims the Border Force officer “totally changed his tune,” returning her passport and escorting her to the platform to catch her train.

“I only know one thing [the Home Office] Respond to media pressure. “I would really like to get to the point where someone would explain to me why, despite my stable status in the European Union, my passport was taken away from me.”

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I was told I ‘failed an immigration check’ and had my passport confiscated by @UKorderukhomeoffice, which is totally unacceptable! I went to Paris for a little trip and now I can’t go back to my home in London despite my settled EU status pic.twitter.com/IgQ2c2LKTU

— Dahaba Ali Hussain (@Dahabaalihussen) December 10, 2022

Hussain also described hearing a white woman before asking permission from a British Border Patrol officer to pass using a scan of her passport, because she had originally left Bordeaux.

“I literally remember looking at her thinking, ‘Good luck.’ Are you trying to get into the club? Hussein said, adding that the officer allowed the woman to pass.

“This is not an isolated incident,” Hussein said of her ordeal. “They do it to people of color the most.”

Responding to Hussain’s tweet, the In Limbo project, which collects testimonies about the impact of Brexit from both UK and EU citizens, said: “This is not an isolated incident. Fortunately, @Dahabaalihussen has now been able to return to the UK, But this ordeal would not have happened if the British government had given us all physical evidence of our immigration status.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “As part of routine security checks, Ms Hussain was briefly delayed, but at no time was she told she could not travel to the UK, nor did she miss her train.

“We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused Ms. Hussain, but we will always prioritize the country’s security.”

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