Home Office Has Lost Track of 3,555 Illegal Immigrants Destined for Rwanda

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrives to attend a press conference regarding the Britain and Rwanda treaty to transfer illegal immigrants to the African country, at the Downing Street Briefing Room, in London, on April 22, 2024. Toby Melville/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

A Cabinet minister has said 3,555 illegal immigrants who have dropped off the Home Office’s radar after being earmarked for deportation to Rwanda “will be found.”

According to a government document which was updated on Monday, only 2,145 out of the 5,700 people identified for removal to Rwanda, “continue to report to the Home Office and can be located for detention.”

Health Secretary Victoria Atkins told Sky News the Home Office was “used to this” and law enforcement agencies had “a range of measures” to find and remove those people who were no longer formally reporting to the Home Office.

She said: “We want the message to go out loud and clear that if somebody doesn’t report as they should do, they shouldn’t think that they’ll get away with it. They will be found.”

Labour Asks How Home Office ‘Keep Losing So Many People’

Labour’s shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock said the document “exposes the total lack of grip the Conservatives have over the asylum system.”

He said: “The prime minister promised to detain and remove all those who crossed the Channel. Now he can’t even locate those intended for removal. How can the Conservative Home Office keep losing so many people?”

But the prime minister’s official spokesman later said it was “not an accurate representation” to say 3,555 illegal immigrants could not be located.

He said an initial cohort of around 2,000 suitable cases had been identified for removal and had been placed on immigration bail with strict reporting conditions.

As for those outside that group, he said the Home Office “continues to have a wide range of tools to maintain contact with them, including face-to-face and digital reporting.”

In January Home Secretary James Cleverly admitted to MPs up to 33,085 illegal immigrants who were already in Britain but whose applications for asylum were “inadmissible” could conceivably be sent to Rwanda.

Conservative MP Tim Loughton, who sits on the Home Affairs Committee, said: “They have no legal status in this country under the terms of the Illegal Migration Act—other than those who have criminal records that require them to be detained in a secure facility—they are at large in the UK, and could turn out to be missing on a greater scale than Mr. [Simon] Ridley could account for in November.” Mr. Ridley is the lead of the Migration and Borders System.

But Mr. Cleverly replied: “I don’t agree with the word missing. I think that word implies something which doesn’t reflect the circumstances.”

Illegal immigrants sit on an inflatable raft before attempting to illegally cross the English Channel to reach Britain, off the coast of Sangatte, France, on July 18, 2023. Bernard Barron/AFP/Getty Images

Under the government’s migration and economic development partnership with Rwanda—the official agreement under which Britain is paying Kigali to take illegal immigrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats pending asylum applications—an equality impact assessment had to be carried out.

That document gave the figures for those not reporting to the Home Office and also acknowledged there could be further delays to deportations caused by MPs making last-minute interventions on behalf of constituents.

There is a long-standing parliamentary convention that deportations must be suspended if an MP makes a request.

The assessment document says, “We may expect future cases to attract significant attention from MPs, and responders may be overwhelmed by cases, causing a delay or removal to be cancelled pending a response.”

The government has finally passed legislation that would allow deportation flights to Rwanda to go ahead but the challenges by MPs could be a further obstacle put in the way of the flagship policy.

Home Office Insists Rwanda Flights Will Take Off in 10–12 Weeks

A Home Office spokesman said, “As the prime minister has made clear, we will get flights off the ground to Rwanda in the next 10 to 12 weeks.”

“In preparation for flights taking off, we have identified the initial cohort to be removed to Rwanda and have hundreds of dedicated caseworkers ready to process any appeals,” he added.

The latest Home Office figures suggest more than 7,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the UK so far this year, a new record for the first four months of a calendar year.

About 500 crossed the Channel on Friday and Saturday alone, taking the provisional total for 2024 to 7,167.

This exceeds the previous record of 6,691 for January to April 2022, and has already surpassed 5,946 for the first four months of 2023.

It means arrivals are 24 percent higher than this time last year and 7 percent higher than at this point in 2022.

But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has claimed the “deterrent” effect of the Rwanda policy was “already having an impact” after it was reported that 80 percent of recent asylum seekers into the Republic of Ireland had crossed the border from Northern Ireland.

PA Media contributed to this report.