Send Him Back

J. C. Dias did not plan to write this book. He did not plan to meet Ashir. But some stories refuse to let you go. Inside one of four UK prisons, J. C. met a man he calls Ashir, a refugee from Darfur who had survived genocide, crossed deserts on foot, endured slavery in Libya, and arrived in the United Kingdom believing in the promise he had seen written on aid trucks as a child. What he found instead was a system that processed him as a threat, not a human being.
Over seven months, Ashir told J. C. his story, a little at a time, some days nothing, other days everything. J. C. wrote down every word. This book is the result: a witness account of one man's journey across the most dangerous migration routes in the world, and what awaited him at the end. In a time when politicians build careers by reducing refugees to statistics, when headlines strip human beings of their names, their faces, their stories.
Send Him Back gives one man back all three. This is not a political argument. It is not a documentary. It is a witness. A cry. A hand reaching out in the dark. Because behind every label, immigrant, asylum seeker, illegal, there is a name. Ashir's story is not fiction. It is the truth most people try hard not to see.