British Border Force officials have admitted that some Afghans airlifted from Kabul have been found to have forged papers or no papers at all, but they are reluctant to “have an argument” with them.
The Telegraph, a right-leaning newspaper close to Boris Johnson’s government, reports being told by border guards that “some Afghan evacuees had arrived at Heathrow with no documentation at all, while others carried forged papers”.
Assistant Director of Border Force Heathrow Ian Denison appeared to confirm these rumours, justifying the situation by telling the newspaper that some of the new arrivals “tell us they’ve lost the documents they had”.
“We’re not going to have an argument with the people that have been through the process they’ve been through,” he insisted. “You see people with their life belongings in plastic bags.”
The Border Force leader’s statement that his officials are unwilling to “have an argument” with Home Secretary Priti Patel’s assurances that border checks are “vigorous”.
“We have done the checks ‘out of country’ before they’ve come here, so they have digital status and digital identities… They are going through step-by-step identity, security, biometric checks [in the United Kingdom],” she insisted.
Denison’s superior at Border Force Heathrow, Tim Kingsberry, further insisted that “The people who are on the plane[s] are eligible,” despite the fact that “they may still not necessarily have that formal type of identification that we would expect to have here”.
He insisted that Afghan evacuees “demonstrated their entitlement in Kabul”, however at least one evacuee on Britain’s ‘no-fly’ list is known to have been brought to the country in error — although officials are claiming after the fact that he is no longer deemed a threat to the public.
Allied countries have faced similar issues, with the French authorities having had to put at least five evacuees under surveillance after discovering they had Taliban ties, with one suspect actually being put under house arrest — which he promptly violated.
Sweden has also reported that at least two of its evacuees turned out to be people previously convicted of crimes in Sweden and deported from the country.
The Swedish authorities have refused to say what crimes they committed, but as the Scandinavian country is notoriously soft on migrant criminals it is likely they were serious crimes to have actually reached the threshold of being deported.
Breitbart London has asked the Home Office exactly how many evacuees had no papers, forged papers, or were discovered to have been deported previously or named on ‘no-fly’ or ‘no-entry’ lists, but is still awaiting a response.