Foreign crooks including drug dealers carried out MORE crimes in Britain after Keir Starmer campaigned for them to stay
FOREIGN crooks including violent thugs, drug dealers and a stalker carried out further crimes in Britain after Sir Keir Starmer campaigned for them to stay.
Just weeks before taking over as Labour leader in 2020, he signed a letter calling for 50 dangerous offenders not to be deported on a flight to Jamaica.
The former Crown Prosecution Service boss demanded “all future charter flights must be suspended” — and even suggested the convicts be handed taxpayer-funded mobile phones to help them with their attempts to stay in Britain.
But a Sun investigation reveals seven of the convicts went on to commit more violent or drug-related crimes following the intervention.
Our revelation comes as Sir Keir attempts to appear tough on crime today with a major speech on anti-social behaviour.
He is also resisting the Government’s policy bid to deport illegal arrivals to the UK to Rwanda.
Among those who reoffended on the back his 2020 intervention was heroin dealer Akiva Heaven, who had already served four years behind bars and was released in 2018.
He was jailed again in May 2021 for dealing cocaine and heroin in Southsea, Hants. Starmer also helped stop Barrington Laing from being removed — despite a decade of crime beginning when he was in an Asbo gang aged just 14.
The Labour leader was director of public prosecutions when teenager Laing was banned from Croydon city centre for terrifying families.
Seven months before Starmer helped halt the deportation flight, county-lines dealer Laing was jailed for four years and four months.
Canterbury crown court heard he led cops on a high-speed car chase through Margate when he was selling drugs into Kent.
He hit a car and tried to stash £780 under a hospital bed.
Laing was jailed again last November — six months for carrying a knife.
Another intended deportee was a drug dealer who had served two years behind bars.
After being allowed to remain in Britain, he was later sentenced to another five years for drugs offences.
Others who stayed — who cannot be named — include a convicted robber who went on to commit a violent assault and a county-lines dealer who was later convicted of stalking and drug dealing.
Another convicted robber committed an assault and was jailed for ten months.
The seventh, who served four years in jail for drug dealing, later committed more drugs crimes.
As citizens of a foreign country who had already been convicted of serious offences, they should have been removed as required by long-standing legislation.
But Sir Keir — who at the time was pitching to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader — helped thwart the tough approach.
After he and other Labour MPs signed the letter — bringing the matter to public attention — they were supported by celebs including actress Thandiwe Newton.
And on the back of the campaigning, a last-minute legal challenge saw an order banning 23 of the detainees from being removed from Britain as planned.
Two days after the letter was published, a flight took off with just 17 of the offenders — less than half.
Our revelations come after another letter signed by senior Labour MPs and celebrities helped keep prolific offender Ernesto Elliott, 45, in Britain before he murdered a man in a knife fight in June 2021.
Labour said it is not the party’s policy to block deportations, adding: “These cases are a catalogue of Tory failure.”
A spokesman claimed the letter signed by Sir Keir made no difference when “the Tories have left the department responsible for our national security unable to deal with violent and serious criminals”.
They said: “It’s the Government’s failure to sort out their own legal systems or put someone on another flight that is responsible for these crimes, not some letter.”
The Home Office said the new Nationality and Borders Act “makes it harder for people to make last-minute legal challenges as a delay tactic to frustrate removals”.