City officials say they found about 200 tents and structures in the homeless encampment known as the Jungle.
This homeless encampment in Seattle is also known as "the Jungle" and will soon be cleared by local authorities. City of Seattle

After getting the go-ahead from a judge, French police have been evicting refugees from an encampment near the town of Calais and demolishing the structures they'd been living in. The camp is known as "the Jungle," the same name often used for a Seattle homeless encampment local officials are promising to clear in coming months.

The video below from Channel 4 shows police wearing riot gear and authorities bulldozing structures at the refugee camp—despite promises that wouldn't happen. Another from The Independent shows police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons on refugees.

The Intercept outlines the importance of the camp:

The unsanctioned camp, located in Calais, France, is a jumping off point for asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Eritrea, Iraq, and Iran attempting to sneak onto trains to cross the Channel Tunnel into the UK. It has grown to an estimated 5,500 people, who live in vinyl tents or makeshift wooden structures with inadequate sanitation, food, water, and warmth. A camp nearby, outside the town of Dunkirk, holds another 2,000 or so asylum seekers. The French government is seeking to reduce the Jungle’s population to 2,000 by convincing residents to apply for asylum in France or to return to their home countries.

“We didn’t realize they would do it like this,” one aid worker told The Intercept. “We didn’t know that they would do it so violently.”

Meanwhile, in Seattle, city and state officials have said they plan to clear the homeless encampment under I-5 known as the Jungle, where they estimate about 400 people are living. Clearly, there's a difference in the scale and political realities of Seattle's homelessness crisis and Europe's refugee crisis, but the question is the same in both cases: Where will the people living in the Jungle go?

While the mayor's office says the sweep of Seattle's Jungle will come with robust offers of services, some advocates have questioned whether the city has the right types of low-barrier shelter options to serve the people living in the Jungle. Regardless, the effort will involve forcing the people living there out and clearing any structures.

State Senator Reuven Carlyle, who believes the camp is too dangerous to remain open, has tried to walk back his plans to build a razor wire fence around the area to try to keep people out, but some sort of fencing is still likely. Local officials say planning for and executing the sweep could take as long as nine months.