The UK government is doubling down on its contentious attempts to deport asylum seekers by seeking to replicate its agreement with Rwanda, Downing Street confirmed on Thursday.
A spokesperson for prime minister Rishi Sunak said: “We do plan to negotiate similar deals with other countries, akin to the Rwanda partnership,” and declined to comment on press reports that negotiations were under way with Belize, Paraguay and Peru, all of whom denied they were involved.
Sunak’s government is under intense public pressure to end a surge in migrants crossing the Channel to England and address broader chaos in the asylum system, with home secretary Suella Braverman under fire for allowing an immigration processing camp at Manston, Kent, to become dangerously overcrowded.
But any attempt to reproduce the Rwanda agreement, which has already cost more than £120mn and has yet to get off the ground, would face legal and other difficulties.
The deal with Rwanda was launched by former home secretary Priti Patel in April, as part of government efforts to crack down on people smugglers and curb cross-channel crossings. In return for Rwanda agreeing to process asylum seekers deported from the UK, and grant successful applicants refugee status and support, Kigali received an upfront payment of £120mn.
“Many of those deals would be likely to run into similar problems to the Rwanda deal in terms of their cost to the public purse and in terms of startling lack of efficiency — before you even get to whether Britain is abiding by the refugee convention,” said David Cantor, founder of the Refugee Law Initiative, an academic centre focused on refugee law.
The first plane of refugees chartered for Kigali was halted on the tarmac after a last-minute intervention by the European Court of Human Rights. The policy has since been stalled by a series of judicial review challenges at the High Court over the legality of the policy with a verdict expected as soon as next week.
Braverman on Thursday visited the facility at Manston, where migrant numbers were down to 3,000 from 4,000 at the start of the week.
In the rush to reduce crowding at the facility, which was designed with a capacity for 1,600, one group of migrants had earlier in the week been abandoned for several hours in central London, after being dropped off by bus.
On Thursday, Detention Action, one of the NGOs that has taken legal action to stall the Rwanda deal, announced that it was also taking the government to court on behalf of an individual woman claimant at Manston.
Detention Action said that systemic problems at the former air base included: “The routine prolongation of detention beyond statutory time limits; failure to adhere to essential safeguarding measures for children; children and women sleeping alongside adult men to whom they are unrelated; inadequate or non-existent access to legal advice for those detained; and exposure to infectious diseases due to overcrowding.”
The Home Office said over 1,000 people have been moved off-site within the last five days, “helping return Manston on to a more sustainable footing”.
“This is a complex and difficult situation, which we need to tackle on all fronts and look at innovative solutions. To break the business model of the people smugglers, we need to ensure that the illegal migration route across the Channel is ultimately rendered unviable,” Braverman said.
With additional reporting by Lucinda Elliott in Buenos Aires, Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá and David Agren in Mexico City.
