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Sir Keir Starmer’s government is hiring 100 specialist intelligence officers and plans to expand the immigration detention estate as part of a drive to increase returns of failed asylum seekers to levels last seen in 2018.
The Home Office on Wednesday said up to 100 such officials and investigators would be recruited and deployed to the National Crime Agency in order to “disrupt and smash criminal smuggling gangs” and prevent “dangerous” small boat Channel crossings.
It also said bed capacity at two immigration removal centres — Campsfield near Oxford and Haslar in Hampshire — would rise by 290 as part of efforts to increase both enforced and voluntary returns of asylum seekers whose applications had been rejected.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper said the government was “taking strong and clear steps to boost our border security and ensure the rules are respected and enforced”.
“By increasing enforcement capabilities and returns, we will establish a system that is better controlled and managed,” she added, noting that the government planned to achieve the highest rate of removals since 2018 in the next six months.
Before Starmer won power last month, he pledged to “smash the gangs” trafficking asylum seekers across the Channel on small boats, slash the reliance on costly hotels for housing migrants and boost the number of failed asylum seekers being sent to their home countries.
The Labour leader said he would increase returns by hiring 1,000 people to form a “returns unit” inside the Home Office that would rapidly review the cases of people arriving from “safe” countries such as Albania and India so that they could be swiftly sent back and deal with others whose asylum claims had been denied.
The government has so far hired 300 people to staff this unit, according to a Home Office insider.
The Home Office said nine flights returning failed asylum seekers to their home countries had left Britain since Starmer entered office on July 5, including one it described as “the largest-ever chartered”.
Labour has also said previously it will seek to strike bilateral returns deals with countries deemed safe, such as Vietnam, Turkey and Kurdistan, as well as agree a new returns accord with the EU.
The number of asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats has increased by 9 per cent this year compared with the same time last year, with more than 19,200 people having made the journey by August 19.
The Home Office on Wednesday also said it would crack down on companies and individuals hiring irregular migrants as workers, including via financial penalties, business closure orders and potential prosecution.
Work in this area is being overseen by Bas Javid, Home Office director-general for immigration enforcement and brother of former Conservative chancellor Sajid Javid.
Natasha Tsangarides, associate director of advocacy at the NGO Freedom from Torture, said: “We all want to see an end to the chaos and harm inflicted on those seeking sanctuary in the UK, but this must not come at the expense of fairness and justice.”
She added: “We know from the survivors of torture we support that blunt enforcement policies and detention only ever cause devastating harm.”
The government last month scrapped the Rwanda asylum scheme and said it would end use of the Bibby Stockholm barge, bringing a close to some of the previous Tory administration’s contentious and costly initiatives for processing and accommodating migrants.
