The first relocation flight which scheduled to ship over a hundred migrants from Britain to Rwanda has predictably bogged down with multiple legal challenges.
After months of hearsay and government inaction, the first flight transferring migrants to Rwanda — in hopes of discouraging people from passing through multiple safe countries before claiming asylum in Britain as a matter of choice rather than necessity — was finally scheduled to take place next week.
However, to the surprise of no one, the policy has come under heavy fire from activist lawyers, with multiple legal challenges now raising doubts as to whether or not the flight will actually take place.
According to a report by the left-wing Guardian, pro-migration organisations Care4Calais and Detention Action and the Commercial Services Union — a trade union which, somewhat incredibly, represents Border Force staff — have launched a judicial review which alleges that the Rwanda relocation flights are unlawful.
Meanwhile, The Daily Mail claims that more than half of the 130 individuals due to be sent to sub-Saharan Africa have kicked off their own legal challenges, much to the chagrin of government officials within the Priti Patel-led Home Office.
“As predicted, specialist immigration lawyers are pulling every trick in the book and exploiting every possible loophole to get their clients off the flight,” the publication reports one unnamed ministry insider as saying, noting that all of those being deported could have claimed asylum elsewhere “instead of coming to the UK illegally”.
“Priti won’t back down though, and government lawyers will be working around the clock to try and defeat as many of these barriers as possible, while changes through the Nationality and Borders Act will help drive down the merry-go-round of claims,” the anonymous official went on to claim.
The Conservative Party, which has been in office continuously since 2010, has had well over a decade to do something about the “tricks” and “loopholes” its ministers are complaining about, of course.
As of the time of writing, over 10,000 boat migrants have landed in the United Kingdom via the English Channel this year, representing a figure almost eclipsing the number of arrivals by this time last year and this time in 2020 combined.
Overall, the Home Office expects this number to rise to a total of 65,000 by the end of this year, though some, such as Brexit leader Nigel Farage, have predicted the figure could end up being as high as 100,000.
In this sense, the Home Office’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda appears rather inadequate, with government documents suggesting that the United Kingdom will only deport a maximum of around 300 illegals each year — if it deports anyone — compared to the thousands arriving by boat almost every month.
Notably, tens of thousands more continue to come by other means, such as stowing away on lorries or overstaying visas, but little attention has been focused on these issues with the ongoing national focus on dangerous boat crossings.
Before the question of how many migrants might be transferred to Rwanda can even be considered, however, the British government needs to get the plan past the hordes of legal and deep state activists who desperately want to see the policy buried — and its track record in fighting these people to date has been less than stellar.
Indeed, the British state has repeatedly had tough-sounding border enforcement plans crushed by activists using the hammer of the country’s own legal system, and though mandarins and politicians alike have repeatedly promised that this time will be different, there is no solid evidence suggesting this to be the case as yet.
“If [Home Secretary Priti Patel] says she’ll get rid of the lefty lawyers’ claims, well, I think she may have another thing coming,” said Labour Party lawmaker Alf Dubs, who has criticised the Rwanda policy.
“My understanding is that they’re going to have real difficulties in getting this through anyway,” he added.
Deportations in 2021 were a mere 2,761, a fall of 18 per cent compared to the already poor figures for 2020 and 62 per cent compared to 2019, clearly demonstrating that the government’s performance on removals is getting significantly worse rather than improving.
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