'It was filthy. But it was our only hope'

A rude awakening awaits migrants who risk lives and money to realise their dreams of a better life

Crouched beside the public tap in Villemin park near Paris's Gare de l'Est, Gulem rinsed his socks and hung them on a fence to dry. Beside him, Ali, 13, was washing his hair, bent over under the ice-cold water as an older migrant squeezed him a ration of shampoo.

Gulem described how he and other Afghans had fled to Paris by train to avoid being caught during a raid on the Jungle squatter camps in Calais. He had lived there for a month, under pieces of plastic sheeting set up under trees on sand dunes near Calais port. From there, he had made repeated attempts to stow away to England. "It was filthy. We had no water, little food but it was our only hope," he said. "We're just waiting to get back to Calais. We've no choice, no hope unless we're up there trying to get to England. What else can we do?"

Gulem will be sleeping rough in Paris, amid the scores of Afghan migrants who bed down on pavements and alleyways around this Paris park despite raids.

Like others in the Jungle, Gulem, a 35-year-old tailor from Afghanistan, had paid a vast sum to be smuggled through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey and into Europe. "It was the equivalent of eight years' salary, plus contributions from my brothers and my whole family." But he got stuck at the no man's land of migrants outside Calais port.

Like the Jungle in Calais, Villemin Park has become a symbol of the failure of France and Britain to tackle the migrant problem since the closure of the Sangatte Red Cross camp in 2002. The Afghans gathered there suggested the Calais raid would not solve their problems but simply displace them.

Some migrants said that in the run-up to the Calais raid, it had become slightly easier for people to slip into England, stowing away under lorries. "In our camp, two seemed to get through in one week," Gulem said. "In the Pashtun camp it seemed more, maybe 15 a week." People traffickers are using the rumours as "a marketing ploy" to lure more migrants.

The French government knew that announcing the raids in advance would mean that police would find only a few hundred at the Jungle camps, rather than the usual 800 people sleeping rough.

Reza, a student in his twenties from northern Afghanistan, had been sleeping rough in and around the Paris park for six months and preferred it to the limbo of Calais. He had noticed the new arrivals who had fled the "Jungle" in fear of the police. "We have nothing here. We are forced to sleep under bridges. We try to get papers in France and are just left hanging on. A lot of people want to get back to Calais to try their luck."

Isarullah, 21, a former student, showed knife scars on his stomach and chest, saying violence had made him leave his village outside Kabul. "The conditions here are a nightmare," he said. "We have nothing to eat except a bit of bread we get as hand-outs. There's a whole generation of young Afghans here who just want papers and a chance to work but it seems more and more hopeless."