Demonstrations over the government’s use of hotels to house asylum seekers erupted across Britain on Saturday, with anti-immigration groups and counter-protesters facing off in at least 20 towns and cities. Police separated roughly 200 rival demonstrators outside a Horley hotel in Surrey, while similar scenes were reported in Bournemouth, Bristol, Nuneaton, Liverpool, Aberdeen and Perth. The protests have intensified after a High Court judge on 19 August granted an injunction barring the Home Office from placing asylum seekers in the Bell Hotel in Epping Forest, Essex. Ministers lodged an appeal on Friday, arguing that the ruling jeopardises plans to phase out hotel accommodation nationwide by 2029 while still meeting legal obligations to house claimants. Government data show 32,100 asylum seekers were living in hotels at the end of June—an 8 percent rise from a year earlier—at a cost that commentators estimate at £7 billion to £10 billion a year. Polling by More in Common and YouGov indicates immigration has overtaken the National Health Service as the public’s second-most important issue, cited by 34 percent of voters. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage sought to capitalise on public frustration, telling The Times he would withdraw Britain from the European Convention on Human Rights and run up to five deportation flights a day under a £10 billion programme that would hold 24,000 migrants on former air bases. Farage called the measures a response to what he described as a national emergency caused by record Channel crossings.