UK widens crackdown on small boat crossings to deport more than 14,000 migrants
- The Labour government pledged to tackle illegal immigration with new measures, including increasing detention capacity
Keir Starmer’s government pledged to increase deportations of people with no legal right to stay in the UK to the highest rate in five years, an effort to show it is responding to Britons’ concerns about rising immigration.
The Home Office said on Wednesday it will recruit as many as 100 intelligence officers at the National Crime Agency to help dismantle organised crime groups operating small boat crossings by asylum seekers across the English Channel. It also said it would increase migrant detention capacity and crack down on firms hiring illegal workers, as the new Labour administration grapples with an issue that undermined the Conservatives under former prime minister Rishi Sunak.
The measures are part of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plan to lift the removal rate – including of asylum seekers whose claims were rejected – to the highest level since 2018 over the next six months, according to the statement. The Home Office said that effectively means removing over 14,389 people.
“By increasing enforcement capabilities and returns, we will establish a system that is better controlled and managed, in place of the chaos that has blighted the system for far too long,” Cooper said.
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During the election, Starmer promised to tackle the gangs organising crossings by asylum seekers, and soon after taking office he scrapped Sunak’s policy to deport migrants to Rwanda – a plan that the Tories in any case never put into action. Labour’s calculation was that Sunak had failed in his key promise to “stop the boats” and that voters were open to a new approach.
