An Italian tourist was detained for seven hours and rejected by the British border authorities, who treated him like a liar or a criminal. “It was horrible, I am disgusted with how they treated me, I have never been so humiliated in my life,” 51-year-old Sergio D’Alberti told the Guardian, vowing he would never go back to Britain. “For me, the United Kingdom no longer exists, it is no longer part of my vocabulary. After Calais is the North Pole,” he said.
Unemployed hotel manager due to covid, D’Alberti left his home on the Cote d’Azur for a driving holiday to the Irish county of Kerry, where his wife’s relatives live. But at the Calais border post, where you stop before entering the Channel Tunnel or getting on the ferry, they didn’t believe him. He said they detained him for seven hours, photographed him and took his fingerprints “as if I were a criminal”.
D’Alberti said he was a tourist, but the authorities became convinced he wanted to look for a job or weigh on British social security. Suspicion was raised by the fact that, apart from the quarantine hotel, he had not booked any other hotels and had no return ticket. D’Alberti had 4500 euros of funds, which were not deemed sufficient for his maintenance “without working or receiving public funds”. The notification denying him entry, shown on the Guardian’s website, says his statements that he did not want to enter Britain to look for work were not deemed “satisfactory”.