The government is hoping to send thousands of migrants more than 4,000 miles away to the East African country as part of a deal to deter asylum seekers…reports Asian Lite News
Interior minister Suella Braverman said she was convinced Rwanda was a safe country to resettle migrants who had arrived in Britain illegally but she declined to set any deadline for the first deportations to the country.
The British government is hoping to send thousands of migrants more than 4,000 miles away to the East African country as part of a 120 million pound ($148 million) deal to deter asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France in small boats.
The plan was announced in April 2022, but the first deportation flight was blocked by an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights. London’s High court ruled in December the scheme was legal, but opponents are seeking to appeal that ruling.
Britain last month set out details of a new law barring the entry of asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the Channel that will prevent them from claiming asylum and will aim to deport them either back to their homeland or to so-called safe third countries.
Some charities say the proposed law could be impractical and criminalise the efforts of thousands of genuine refugees.
Braverman was asked by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg about a violent protest over rations in a camp in Rwanda in 2018, which Rwandan police said resulted in the deaths of at least five refugees.
Braverman said she was not familiar with that case but was “on strong ground” in saying Rwanda was a safe country, and she added that it was the right solution for Britain’s small boats problem.
“We’re looking at 2023 and beyond,” she said on Sunday. “The High Court – senior expert judges – have looked into the detail of our arrangement with Rwanda and found it to be a safe country and found our arrangements to be lawful.”
Braverman, who visited Rwanda last month, would not give a deadline for the first flight to depart.
“We have to be realistic,” she told Sky News. “We had a very strong victory in the High Court at the end of last year on Rwanda. We’ve now introduced legislation. We want to move as quickly as possible to relocate people from the UK to Rwanda.”
However, a Home Office source had told reporters that “we are certainly working towards getting the flights off before the summer”. Several news organisations interpreted that as a pledge to remove people under the scheme.
Braverman was also unable to say when the government’s plan to “stop the boats” bringing people across the Channel would be delivered. “I’m not going to put dates on it, but the rules are clear: if you arrive here illegally, you’ll be detained,” she said.
The shadow levelling up secretary, Lisa Nandy, said government strategies to tackle irregular immigration had failed and added millions of pounds to the costs of improving the asylum system – and that Braverman should take responsibility.
“She complains about an asylum system that’s broken. I think she really does need to ask who broke it, and the answer to that lies by looking in a mirror,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
“I think this is a con trick being perpetrated on the British people. The government is not processing asylum claims. They’ve got an enormous backlog. They’ve added £500m to the costs because of these delays that have been caused by them pursuing all these new strategies: barges that don’t exist, claims to send people to Rwanda that haven’t materialised. What we need is a government that gets a grip on the system.”
Braverman refused to confirm reports that ministers were close to signing a contract with Portland port authorities over floating accommodation for refugees, saying she was looking at “all sorts of land and sites and vessels” for accommodation.
However, one source confirmed to the Guardian that the Bibby Stockholm, a vessel moored off the Dorset coast, would be used by the government to house refugees from June.
The home secretary said: “We’re aiming to roll out these sites very quickly and start making them fit for accommodation purposes and relocate people on to those sites for asylum purposes.
“But we’re looking at all options. We’re looking at all sorts of land and sites and vessels and we’re in negotiations with a high number of operators around the country.”
Braverman also refused to say whether she still wanted annual overall net immigration, which the Office for National Statistics estimated at about 500,000 last year, to be capped at 100,000.
She said last October that her “ultimate aspiration” would be to get it down into the tens of thousands, while the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto made a commitment that “overall numbers will come down”.
Braverman insisted that Rwanda was “safe for refugees” despite being asked about an incident in which, Kuenssberg said, police shot live rounds at a group of refugees and 12 people were killed at the Kiziba refugee camp in 2018, according to the UN.
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