They are understood to include several men who arrived in the UK recently after crossing the English Channel in small boats. But ministers are preparing for the evictions to be blocked by legal action. A Whitehall source told the Daily Express: “We are moving forward with this policy. The first asylum seekers we plan to deport to Rwanda will be notified this week.
A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment on the scheme. She said, “We don’t discuss operational matters.”
The move comes after the interior minister struck a deal with the Rwandan government for migrants suspected of crossing the Channel for economic reasons to be resettled in the East African state.
UK taxpayers will pay £120m to fund the scheme.
Ms Patel made the deal following concerns over growing numbers of migrants making the dangerous crossing to the UK across the English Channel.
Analysis of government figures showed 7,240 people had reached the UK after sailing busy shipping lanes from France in small boats this year.
But the scheme has drawn criticism from opposition MPs, refugee support organizations and anti-deportation campaigners.
On Friday night, protesters interrupted a speech by the Home Secretary at a Tory dinner party.
Eight young social justice and climate activists from the Green New Deal Rising campaign disrupted the Bassetlaw Conservative Association Spring Dinner.
They demanded that she drop the plans.
Boris Johnson has warned that ‘liberal left lawyers’ are preparing legal action to try to block the scheme.
Meanwhile, Justice Secretary Dominic Raab yesterday promised ‘common sense’ measures to make it easier to deport foreign offenders as part of an overhaul of human rights laws to be announced tomorrow in The Queen’s Speech to Parliament.
The justice secretary accused some lawyers of taking advantage of human rights law and said there had been ‘elastic interpretations’ of the law in the courts which had prevented criminals from being sent back to their country of origin.
Reform of human rights law was promised in the 2019 Tory manifesto and the measures are likely to feature in the Queen’s Speech.
He told LBC Radio that some lawyers were looking to take advantage of the existing human rights framework.
“I am proud that we have a world-class, world-class legal services profession.
“I’m proud that we have a justice system that is the envy of the world,” he said.
“But equally, there will always be those who benefit.
“But the truth is that the job is on us, the responsibility is on us, and we take this very seriously, to fix the systemic issues.
“That’s why we’re going to replace the human rights act with a bill of rights so that we have less lens shift, less elastic interpretations of human rights, which I think the public finds frustrating in the context of the deportation of foreign national offenders.
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Source: www.express.co.uk
This notice was published: 2022-05-08 18:34:44
