The new British government detailed new measures to combat illegal immigration on Wednesday, August 21, promising in particular to attack “people smuggling gangs” and increase the number of migrant deportations.
With the fine weather, migrants are arriving almost daily on the English coast after crossing the Channel on rubber dinghies. There were more than 200 on Monday, nearly 500 on Saturday. On August 11, there were more than 700, a record since the Labour Party came to power in early July.
“Preventing dangerous boat crossings”
The fight against illegal immigration was one of the major topics of the election campaign, after 14 years of Conservative government. As soon as he came to power in July, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer abandoned his predecessors’ plan to deport migrants who had arrived illegally to Rwanda.
He promised to deal with the immigration issue “humanely” but to reduce the number of immigrants, legal and illegal.
To do this, Yvette Cooper wants to first tackle the people smugglers. “Up to 100 new officers specializing in intelligence and investigations are being deployed within the National Crime Agency (NCA)” to fight these “gangs” and thus “prevent dangerous boat crossings”, it is written in the press release.
The minister promises to increase deportations. “Staff are being redeployed to increase the number of returns of rejected asylum seekers, which has fallen by 40% since 2010”. Yvette Cooper wants to reach the level of expulsions of 2018 in the next six months.
Some 300 agents have thus been “reassigned to the examination of thousands of files of rejected asylum seekers and returns, including forced and voluntary returns”, according to the ministry. The Ministry of the Interior also wants to target employers who employ irregular migrants.
This article is originally published on fr.news.yahoo.com
