Illegal migrants ‘could be fitted with electronic tracking tags’
People who arrive in the UK illegally may be fitted with GPS tags so the Home Office can keep track of them.
The government created a legal duty for itself to detain those who travel to the UK unlawfully, including asylum seekers, with its controversial Illegal Migration Act.
Under current plans, that would mean sending people to Rwanda where their asylum claims would be assessed.
The new law requires ‘a power to detain and ultimately control those people’, Home Secretary Suella Braverman told Sky News and BBC Breakfast this morning.
She said: ‘We need to exercise a level of control if we are to remove them from the United Kingdom.’
This ‘level of control’ could include electronically tagging migrants who arrive illegally, a Home Office source quoted by The Times said over the weekend.
They reportedly said: ‘There is no reason for [migrants] not to abscond so we have been tasked with a “deep dive” into how we can incentivise them not to disappear.’
A second source added: ‘Tagging has always been something that the Home Office has been keen on and is the preferred option to withdrawing financial support, which would be legally difficult as migrants would be at risk of being left destitute.’
When Ms Braverman was asked to confirm whether this was something the government is looking at, she said she is willing to use a ‘range of options’.
She said: ‘We have a couple of thousand detention places in our existing removal capacity.
‘We will be working intensively to increase that but it’s clear we are exploring a range of options – all options – to ensure that we have that level of control of people so they can flow through our system swiftly to enable us to remove them.’
Activists have long spoken out about such policies, arguing that they could criminalise asylum seekers based on their mode of arrival.
The UK’s immigration estate can hold 2,500 people – significantly fewer than the more than 175,000 asylum seekers currently waiting for a decision on their claims, although many of those people would not be housed in detention facilities.
Taxpayers are forking out £3.97 billion on accommodation and support for people in Home Office detention, including £6 million a day on housing 51,000 people in hotels.
Pro-refugee organisations argue the only way to effectively address the backlog in asylum claims is to use a ‘more humane and orderly approach, starting with an ambitious, workable, person-centred approach’.
The government’s Rwanda deportation scheme was recently deemed unlawful, after Court of Appeal judges overturned a High Court ruling that said the east African nation could be considered a ‘safe third country’.
In the judgment, Sir Geoffrey Vos said there were ‘substantial grounds’ to think that asylum seekers faced ‘real risks’ of torture or inhumane treatment, or that their claims for asylum would not be properly determined in Rwanda.
Rishi Sunak issued a blistering statement following the ruling, where he confirmed an appeal would be made to the Supreme Court.
He said: ‘While I respect the court I fundamentally disagree with their conclusions.
‘The policy of this government is very simple, it is this country – and your government – who should decide who comes here, not criminal gangs. And I will do whatever is necessary to make that happen.’
Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed the current system was ‘rigged against the British people’ on the issue.
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