Emma Dunwell, an independent journalist in the United Kingdom, covered a recent protest against a plan to house asylum seekers in a town called Waterlooville for Rebel News, just outside the southern English city of Portsmouth.

The proposal would have seen 35 migrants given housing in the town centre, only for the Home Office to reverse the decision.

Suella Braverman, a former home secretary and current Conservative MP for Waterlooville, was a vocal opponent of the government's proposal, calling it an “utterly inappropriate” site and “insulting to local people”.

“Those of us who have stood up against this have been called racist, 'inflammatory' and 'divisive'. We are none of these things,” Braverman said, as reported by BBC.

“We are standing up for our country. Well done to the patriotic people of Waterlooville who took a stand for our community and for our country.”

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On July 30, a crowd of more than 1,000 supporters turned out to rally against the migrant housing plan, where Emma Dunwell was on hand to document the event and hear from locals.

“These people aren't vetted, we don't know what they've done, where they've come from and whether they're criminals or not,” one woman Dunwell spoke to said.

“These are illegal migrants; they are not refugees,” said another man. “I think we should be housing our own homeless first.”

If migrants are fleeing conflict zones, “why are they going through 12, 13 countries to come here? Because it's easy pickings,” another man said.

Speaking to the crowd of protesters, Braverman said it was local Conservative councillors who alerted her about the “secret” plan to house migrants in Waterlooville.

“No one had been consulted, no one had been asked. No one agreed to it,” the Conservative MP told the crowd.

Dunwell caught up with Braverman, who said the “solution to this whole problem is that migrants shouldn't be allowed to get into the system in the first place, and they need to be immediately detained and deported.”

A petition against the plot started by Braverman garnered 10,000 signatures.

The previous Conservative government had developed a plan to ship those identified as illegal migrants or asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing and resettlement.

This, Braverman says, “was the right answer to fixing this whole problem” of illegal migration. By abandoning the plan, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government “had shot themselves in the foot,” she added.

Following local backlash, the Waterlooville migrant housing plot was abandoned by the Home Office.