All I want to do is build my life in this city that feels like home

TRAFFICKED BY CRIMINALS, ARTEJA WAS GIVEN A NEW START - NOW SHE FACES DEPORTATION

- By LIAM THORP

A WOMAN who was trafficked into England and forced by criminal gangs to grow cannabis in a house for a year says she has found a new home that she loves in Merseyside - but is now under threat of being deported back to danger.

Arteja Folla was detained by immigration officials in Liverpool at the start of October and is currently being held in Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre in the north east. This week, a plan to move her to Yarl’s Wood removal centre in Bedfordshire before putting her on a flight back to her native Albania was disrupted by campaigners alongside ongoing legal efforts to stop her deportation.

Arteja is 47 and first came to the UK in 2019 on the promise of a better life, a job and a visa.

However, those who arranged her entry into the UK turned out to be a human trafficking gang who would go on to exploit her and force her to live in fear.

Speaking from Derwentside, she told the ECHO: “They recruit you in Albania and they promise to take you to the UK and to find you a job and get you a visa. But when I got here I was taken from house to house and then to a house in Coventry, where they kept me for a year and forced me to grow cannabis.