What really goes on inside asylum hotels: Sami came to the UK on a boat... but now he's smuggled himself back to France after being appalled by rampant drug use and chaos at his accommodation - and he's not the only one

Published: 01:00, 6 June 2026 | Updated: 01:00, 6 June 2026 Sitting in a busy Parisian cafe, Sami Eubte can’t keep the wide smile from his face. At dawn last Saturday, the young boat migrant fled Britain after hiding in a lorry heading for France. It was a remarkable journey because he arrived in Britain only last September on a trafficker’s rubber dinghy with high hopes of a perfect future. ‘From the time I was a small boy in Eritrea, I always dreamed of coming to England,’ Sami told the Daily Mail this week. ‘My dangerous life in a migrant hotel in your country changed my mind. I have been forced to escape.’ Soon after his illegal arrival at Dover eight months ago, Sami was sent by the Home Office to a hotel on Bute Street in Luton. There, he insists, he was sucked into a perilous world where drug-taking among the male migrants was rife, and – he insists – condoned by the property’s government-appointed staff. ‘So many of the migrants smoked cannabis and crack cocaine that I soon did, too. It was difficult not to join in. No one from the Home Office stopped you behaving badly. I was dropping into a wasted life that I didn’t want. I was bored and getting addicted. I had to leave Britain to start afresh.’ As he talked to us over several hours in the French capital, Sami (a nickname for Samuel) showed us a photo of himself and two other Eritrean migrants at the Luton hotel. The trio were openly smoking joints, gesticulating and grinning for the camera, with discarded butts littering the ground. ‘That was just an ordinary day in the hotel,’ says Sami. ‘Drugs helped us pass the time away. We were all getting depressed because we were waiting so long for an answer on our asylum claims.’ The photograph will not please the Home Office, which likes to portray the controversial hotels, spread across the country, as sanctuaries for desperate and innocent refugees fleeing horrors in their homelands. But Sami’s story, told from the heart, shows this is often a fantasy. Sami Eubte in Paris after leaving his taxpayer-paid migrant hotel in Luton and sneaking on to a lorry from an encampment in Dover Sami showed the Mail a photo of himself and two other Eritrean migrants at the Luton hotel, openly smoking joints and posing for the camera The latest government figures suggest there are 185 asylum hotels, housing 20,000 migrants at about £170 per night each The Mail has discovered the 25-year-old is one of scores of asylum seekers returning to France after fleeing the chaotic hotels – there are now, according to the latest government figures, 185 of them, housing 20,000 migrants at about £170 per night each. Some of the escapees are avoiding deportation or have skipped bail to dodge court hearings for crimes ranging from shoplifting to rape and brutal assault. Others, such as Sami, are simply fed up with what he calls a ‘broken asylum system’ where ‘you are left with nothing to do but wait for £49 to be put on your government bank card once a month while not being allowed to work’. His warning chimes with a damning House of Commons assessment of an asylum system which has ‘all but lost control’. The powerful public accounts committee of MPs revealed this week that the Home Office does not know how many failed asylum seekers have absconded or left the country by choice in a ‘shocking and unacceptable state of affairs’. We have been monitoring Dover’s ferry port and lorry parks for months, after receiving a tip-off from government whistleblowers that they are a central hub for migrants plotting to leave for continental Europe. Some pay British-based traffickers to arrange the outgoing ride on lorries, others simply hide inside them. The would-be escapees we have talked to include Iraqis, Iranians, Moroccans, Senegalese, Sudanese, Eritreans and Syrians. One, calling himself Ousmane and from the impoverished African nation of Burkina Faso, said he had left a migrant hotel in Birmingham after waiting months for an asylum decision and then being listed for deportation. Another, an Egyptian, said he had walked out of his Plymouth hostel and returned to France because cigarettes in the UK were too expensive ‘and I like to smoke’. Two court cases reported in the past week have also highlighted the explosively dangerous mood among foreign men living at taxpayers’ expense in the hotels, as well as in Home Office-requisitioned flats and houses. At a hearing in Norwich, 27-year-old Farhad Hosnavi, an Iranian boat migrant, begged to be deported ‘back to Germany’. He was jailed for eight weeks for trashing a police station twice and his asylum hotel three times. In Newcastle, an illiterate Sudanese rapist shouted at the judge: ‘F*** England!’ He told the court, through an interpreter, that he didn’t want to stay. The 32-year-old, who came on a lorry, was imprisoned for a vile attack on a woman he had met in a park and invited to drink with him at his taxpayer-funded accommodation. Under a bridge on Channel View Road in Dover, which overlooks the port and winds past vast lorry parks, we found a small encampment, with a mattress, two duvets, and a few blankets where the migrants sleep while they wait for lorry rides. Seven minutes’ walk away is the Dover Outreach Centre, used by the local homeless as well as migrants for daily showering. Sympathetic staff at a nearby petrol station also leave out unsold food in the evenings. Farhad Hosnavi, an Iranian boat migrant, begged to be deported ‘back to Germany’ during his hearing in Norwich The Mail received a tip-off from government whistleblowers that Dover’s ferry port and lorry parks are a central hub for migrants to leave for continental Europe It was at this squalid encampment that we first met Sami last month. He was alone there, his face poking from under a duvet, but he got up and ran towards us when we called out to him. He told us he was hungry, so we bought him some sandwiches and water. ‘Ten migrants have left for France while I have been here over the past three weeks,’ he told us. ‘All of them paid traffickers to go on a lorry. I have no money so I will keep trying to hide on one.’ With passable English and French, he appears to be a genuine refugee from a chaotic and dysfunctional country. Despite this, he claims the Home Office abandoned him during his seven months at the hotel: ‘I never heard a word from them.’ His East African nation of Eritrea is ruled by a ruthless dictator where every man aged 17 and over must serve in the army, often for life, a condition likened to slavery by international observers. Thousands of Eritreans have fled to Europe. Of the 39,000 boat migrants arriving in the year to March, the highest proportion – 7,042 – were from the country. One, of course, was Sami, a Christian who has a large tattoo of a crucifix on his arm. (The Eritrean population is split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.) Sami told us he is one of five siblings orphaned when their parents died in a bus crash. Dropping out of school at 13 to avoid the army press gangs, he headed towards Europe via neighbouring Ethiopia, and then Sudan. After a tortuous eight-year journey, he arrived in lawless Libya in 2022. With nine other Eritreans, he bought his way on to a trafficker’s boat sailing for Italy which overturned in rough waters. He said: ‘Only three of us could swim, and we survived until the Italian Red Cross came to rescue us. The other six went down in the sea.’ From Italy, he made his way to Paris, where he slept rough doing black-market jobs on building sites before he decided to go to northern France to catch a boat to the UK. ‘I was in the migrant “jungle” camps in Calais and Dunkirk for five months. I was attacked by Turkish gangsters who stole my mobile phone and slashed my face with a knife,’ he says, showing us a deep scar on his left cheek. When he arrived at Dover last September – having paid well over £1,000 in cash to do so – he believed his troubles were over. He expected his asylum claim to be almost guaranteed to succeed, given that 86 per cent of Eritreans are granted the right to stay by the Home Office. And, like many migrants, he had been told Britain was a sanctuary where he would enjoy a luxury hotel room followed by a free house, medical care, education and many other perks. Of course, this is the narrative peddled by greedy traffickers to sell their tickets. But, like most Channel arrivals, Sami was also being encouraged to make the journey by pro-migrant charities operating on the French coast. When Sami’s patience ran out, he left his hotel and headed for Dover by train, where he slept under a bridge and tried to climb on to lorries heading to France With hundreds of British volunteers, these charities run food kitchens in the ‘jungle’ camps. They also offer free advice to men such as Sami on their rights under English and international law and, their critics claim, tactics on how to ‘game’ the British asylum system by concocting bogus stories of ‘persecution’ in their homelands. Many lie about what country they come from, as well as their age. ‘Some migrants falsely pretend to be Eritreans,’ says Sami. ‘They know we have a good chance of getting asylum. Often they really come from Ethiopia. It is so unfair. The border officials do not check their language, no one asks the right questions, and they just get in.’ Finally, Sami’s patience ran out. One day early last month, he left his hotel without telling anyone, including his two Eritrean dope-smoking friends, and headed for Dover by train, dodging the ticket collectors because he had no money. He had heard of the encampment under the bridge on social media from other disgruntled migrants. Sleeping by day on the mattress under the bridge, by night he tried to climb secretly on to lorries heading to France. On one occasion, he successfully slipped inside a lorry – only to find that it was not going back across the Channel. ‘The truck took me to Norwich,’ he says. ‘I just turned round and came back to Dover.’ Last Saturday morning he got lucky. A Senegalese migrant intent on leaving Britain turned up at the encampment under the bridge. ‘I don’t even know this man’s name,’ claims Sami. ‘We agreed to find a lorry ride to France together.’ By 4am, they had a suitable target. ‘A driver was asleep when we climbed inside his truck in the park nearest the encampment. Five hours later we had reached Calais.’ Sami’s escape did not end there. He and his new friend were able to get out only when the driver stopped at a petrol station 17 miles into France. ‘We jumped out. He never saw us and we never spoke to him. It took us seven hours to walk back to Calais, through countryside, asking the way from villagers. Once in the town centre, we went to the train station and came to Paris.’ At the Gare du Nord, the two split up immediately. ‘I went to sleep under the Metro station for a night and have now found a place with friends on the outskirts of Paris.’ Sami feels he has made the right decision. He will start a new life in France; he may even claim asylum. ‘I don’t hate England, just the asylum system. I don’t want to waste my time getting addicted to drugs in a dangerous hotel,’ he says. ‘The Home Office has not contacted me since I left to ask where I am. They will be now paying for an empty room. Until I reached France in the lorry, they were still paying my allowance of almost £10 each week. ‘It is out of control in your country because you let anyone in who asks. Most are not genuine refugees: they just want the money you hand out.’ As he gets up to leave, he turns politely to help me put on my jacket. He gives me a firm handshake before strolling away through Paris to try to forget his unpleasant stay in a British migrant hotel. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.