The Windrush scandal brought the cruelty of Britain’s deportation policies to light, but the practice continues to this day – and shockingly, it is made possible by UK aid money. By Luke de Noronha

Sitting in the computer room of Open Arms drop-in centre, a homeless shelter in Kingston, Jamaica, I turned on my recorder and asked Jason to tell me about his life there. In his distinct east London accent, he described arguments and fights with other residents – about chores, use of the showers, missing possessions. Then, checking no one was around, he complained about the management, claiming that they spoke to him like a child and had threatened to kick him out. Nor did he feel safe when he left the shelter. “People are trying to kill me down here. I need to get back to England,” he said. But having been deported from the UK, and finding himself destitute in Jamaica, he had few options. Jason had been exiled home.

Jason was born in 1984 in Kingston. When he was about five, his mother and grandmother moved to the UK, and so for most of his childhood he was raised by his aunties in Kingston. He had a good childhood in Jamaica. For his wider family, though, the option to move to the UK was viewed as “the dream ticket”, and so, in August 2000, when he was 15, Jason and his 13-year-old brother were put on a flight to London to join their mother. (The official story was that they were just planning to visit their grandmother for a few weeks.) This was the first time Jason had ever been on a plane, and it remains the only commercial flight he has taken.