Migrant hotel protests spread nationwide
In Norwich, hundreds of Union Flag-waving locals gathered outside the Brook Hotel to demand its closure.
There were also protests in Leeds, Southampton and Nottinghamshire, with more planned for Sunday.
The Nottinghamshire protest was mostly peaceful although there was a brief confrontation involving pro-migrant counter-demonstrators.
Masked counter-protesters broke away from the main group – some of whom carried Stand Up to Racism placards – and walked into the middle of the crowd before being escorted away by police.
Female protesters in Norwich told The Telegraph that the migrant hotel made them fear for their safety because two former residents had been jailed for sex offences in the past three months.
Dan Tesfalul, an Eritrean, was sentenced to eight years for raping a woman in Norwich in April. In June, Rashid Al-Waeli, from Yemen, was sentenced to 20 months for child sex offences after he sent sexual messages to a paedophile hunter he believed was a 14-year-old boy.
Sophie, a 20-year-old who declined to give her surname, said: ' It is absolutely petrifying. Go back to the early 2000s when women would walk home from the pub at night alone.
'I would not even think about doing that now. You just don't know who is hiding in a bush and it is getting more and more common. It's scary.'
Louis Bunn, 26, waved a Union Flag as he said he was 'so scared' for the future of his six-year-old daughter because of the hotel.
'I am not fascist,' he said. 'I am not far-Right. I used to vote for the Labour Party.
'But please, all of us need to come together. All of us British – white, brown, black, whatever colour you are, whatever faith you are, whatever race you are – you need to come down here and protect our f---ing children, because this is getting mental.'
At the protest crowds chanted 'Keir Starmer is a w----r' as cars beeped their horns as they drove by.
The demonstration was led by armed forces veterans who had camped overnight outside the Brook Hotel.
Ian Curry, who served in Northern Ireland and Kuwait in the Royal Marines from 1987 to 1999, said the public needed to 'wake up' and demand the closure of the hotels.
' Women and children are not safe in this country,' the 58-year-old said. 'This is what the demonstration was for. Where's all the money for these hotels coming from? It's coming from us.'
Callum Creak, 23, added: 'You just hear horror story after horror story. It's despicable stuff and surely it's right to support shutting the hotels down. It should be a bipartisan issue.'
Protests also took place in Leeds, West Yorkshire, on Saturday as demonstrators shouted 'back in your rubber dinghies' to asylum seekers in the Britannia Hotel.
Demonstrations were also held outside the hotel on Friday night.
In addition to the protests in Bournemouth, Southampton and Sutton-in-Ashfield, demonstrations are also planned on Sunday in Epping in Essex, Wolverhampton and Altrincham in Cheshire.
Police have made 18 arrests and charged seven people in connection with successive demonstrations at Epping, Disorder first erupted there earlier in July after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl..
Epping Forest district council passed a motion on Thursday to call on the Government 'to immediately and permanently close' the hotel 'for the purposes of asylum processing'.
Protests also took place this week outside the four-star Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf, to which the Home Office plans to send asylum seekers.
Some 32,000 asylum seekers are being housed in around 210 hotels across Britain, according to the latest Home Office data from March 2025.
A record 24,000 migrants have crossed the Channel so far in 2025, up 50 per cent.
A spokesman for Norfolk Constabulary said it had arrested two people on Saturday on suspicion of affray following protests at the Brook Hotel earlier in the week.
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