Category Archives: Refugees

Revealed: child refugees will be detained or deported under small boats plan

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Senior Tories condemn ‘sickening’ plans which would allow unaccompanied minors to be held, in U-turn on past legislation

Rishi Sunak’s plan to reduce small boat crossings will effectively reverse a ban on child detention implemented under David Cameron and open the door to an expansion of the practice, the Observer understands.

With a potential Tory rebellion already brewing over the proposals, it has emerged that the Illegal Migration bill will allow the detention of families with children and even allows the deportation of unaccompanied children if it is deemed to be safe in their country of origin.

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UK to help fund immigration detention centre in France, says Rishi Sunak

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PM announces £500m package to stop people trying to cross Channel, after meeting Emmanuel Macron in Paris

Britain will help fund a detention centre in northern France as part of a £500m package to stop refugees trying to cross the Channel, Rishi Sunak has said, amid continuing criticism of his plans to lock up and deport those arriving in small boats.

After a meeting in Paris, Sunak and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said they had agreed joint funding for more French border patrols, including 500 additional officers and new drones.

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Europe’s far right praise UK’s illegal migration bill

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Alternative für Deutschland leaders were among those lauding Sunak’s bill, while other EU figures raised doubts about its legality

European far-right leaders have praised Rishi Sunak’s illegal immigration bill, after a senior EU official repeated her doubts about the legality of the plans.

“Bravo,” wrote the Alternative für Deutschland party on social media. “Way to go! The current [British] government plans now to deny asylum to illegal immigrants and fly them out to Rwanda,” the party wrote on Facebook, saying Germany should follow this approach. “When will we finally have it?”

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UK ministers head to Paris to discuss Channel migrant crossings

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Paris gathering is first such UK-France summit in five years

Rishi Sunak and a series of his ministers are heading to Paris for a summit at which he will push Emmanuel Macron to assist him over Channel migrant crossings – but with little apparent chance of securing an immediate deal on returning people.

The gathering in Paris, the first such UK-France summit in five years, is also based around wider bilateral issues such as defence and Ukraine. However, for Sunak’s domestic focus, it seems set to be dominated by the issue of small boats.

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SNP leadership hopefuls take part in second televised debate – as it happened

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Kate Forbes, Ash Regan and Humza Yousaf take part in debate hosted by Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy

Lucy Frazer won’t be happy. (See 10.40am.) Interviewed by reporters leaving home this morning, Gary Lineker said that he had had a conversation with the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie. He would not reveal what was said. “We chat often,” was all Lineker said.

But Lineker did not look chastened. In fact, he was smiling like a Cheshire cat. Asked if he regretted sending his tweet, he replied “No,” and, asked if he stood by what he said, he replied, “Of course.”

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Braverman says it will be ‘very clear’ to voters at next election if ‘stop the boats’ plan has worked – UK politics live

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Latest updates: home secretary says ‘it’s vital we fix this problem’ as Rishi Sunak prepares to face Keir Starmer at PMQs

Suella Braverman has denied the government is breaking the law with its illegal migration bill in interviews this morning. But, as my colleague Aletha Adu reports, Braverman struggled to clarify if the Olympian Sir Mo Farah would have been deported as soon as he turned 18 years old under the proposed regulations.

Good morning. When Rishi Sunak made five pledges in January, four of them looked relatively easy to meet, and one of them looked impossible. He promised to “pass new laws to stop small boats, making sure that if you come to this country illegally, you are detained and swiftly removed”.

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‘Stop the boats’: Sunak’s anti-asylum slogan echoes Australia’s harsh policy

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In Australia, hostile rhetoric has fuelled a toxic public debate and sought to dehumanise people fleeing harm

“Stop the boats.” The white-on-red slogan on Rishi Sunak’s podium on Tuesday was – word for word – the slogan used by Tony Abbott to win the Australian prime ministership a decade ago.

To Australian audiences, so much of the rhetoric emerging from the UK over its small boats policy is reminiscent of two decades of a toxic domestic debate. A succession of Australian prime ministers have led the rhetorical charge against asylum seekers, insisting that their arrival is an issue of “national security” and “border protection”. They are “illegals”, “queue jumpers” and “terrorists”, Australians have been told, while people-smugglers are the “scum of the earth”.

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UN refugee agency ‘profoundly concerned’ by UK’s illegal migration bill saying it amounts to an asylum ban – politics live

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UNHCR says bill extinguishes the right to seek refugee protection in the UK for those who arrive irregularly

Downing Street has said that Rishi Sunak is going to Dover to meet frontline officers dealing with small boat crossings. He will then return to London for a press conference later in the afternoon.

One of the questions raised by Rishi Sunak’s small boats bill – or illegal migration bill, to give it its formal name – is to what extent ministers believe it will work, and to what extent they are not that bothered about whether it works because they believe that, if it fails, they will be able to use this in election campaign against Labour.

Unlike Labour who have voted against taking action on this issue, this government has a plan to break the business model of people ­smugglers.

A plan to do what’s fair for those at home and those who have a legitimate claim to asylum – a plan to take back control of our borders once and for all.

Labour and others who oppose these measures are betraying hard-working Brits up and down the country - they don’t have any answers themselves but they will still seek to block us in parliament.

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New doubt thrown on Moria arson convictions on eve of appeal hearing

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Lawyers condemn EU asylum policies and demand freedom for young Afghans jailed for 2020 blaze at ‘hellish’ Lesbos camp

A new investigation has casts doubt on evidence used to imprison six Afghan teenagers over a fire that destroyed much of a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos.

Four were sentenced to 10 years in jail for “arson with risk to endanger life” and two were given five years by a youth court. The fire reduced much of the infamous “hell on earth” Moria refugee camp to ashes in September 2020.

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Rishi Sunak’s asylum plan could lead to more small boats crossings in short term, says border officials’ union – live

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Immigration Service Union says criminals will get people across channel before rules change

Good morning. Rishi Sunak started the year with two urgent, intractable problems in his in-tray. Last week he unveiled a solution to the Northern Ireland protocol problem which has attracted more support, and less opposition, than had been expected. Tomorrow he will unveil his legislation to “stop small boats”.

Sunak announced the key elements of his plan in December. There has been more briefing over the weekend, but nothing that substantially alters what we were told three months ago, and nothing that addresses the claims made by many experts in asylum law who argue that trying to stop small boat crossings by legislating to say that people who arrive in the UK illegally will be banned from claiming asylum here just won’t work. The Nationality and Borders Act passed last year already says migrants arriving in the UK illegally are not eligible to claim asylum, but the small boats keep coming.

Not as things stand at the moment. In fact, it’s actually going to be the converse when these things are published and announced in this way.

What it actually does is fuel the service, if you like, that the criminals provide.

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Huge fire at Rohingya refugee camp leaves thousands without shelter

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Fears of future blazes after health, learning and religious facilities also destroyed in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

An estimated 12,000 Rohingya have been left without shelter after a fire tore through part of a cramped refugee camp in southern Bangladesh on Sunday, destroying health centres, learning facilities and mosques.

The fire broke out at Camp 11 of Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, which is home to more than 1 million Rohingya refugees, including 700,000 who fled their home country, Myanmar, after a brutal military crackdown in 2017.

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Pakistan crackdown on Afghan refugees leaves ‘four dead’ and thousands in cells

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Asylum seekers in Karachi tell of terror of being sent back to the Taliban and despair at being shackled and held in Pakistani jails

Refugees are reportedly dying in Pakistani prisons, and children are being arrested and tied together with ropes, as a wave of detentions and deportations spreads fearamong the hundreds of thousands of Afghans who have crossed the border since the Taliban took power.

According to lawyers representing Afghans in detention, at least four people have died in custody, and thousands more, including children, are being held in prisons as Pakistan hardens its stance against Afghan citizens.

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Greece fortifies border to block refugees from Turkish-Syrian earthquakes

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Patrols dispatched to frontier as migration minister calls for fences and surveillance as well as aid to preempt migration

Greece has reinforced border controls along its land and sea frontier with Turkey amid expectations of a new wave of arrivals by people displaced in the earthquakes that have devastated south-east Turkey and northern Syria.

Hundreds of extra border guards began patrolling the Greek-Turkish land frontier in the Evros region at the weekend as contingency measures were stepped up to stave off the expected flows.

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Children among 59 people killed in sailboat crash off Italy’s coast

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Boat believed to be bringing refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan struck rocks off coast of Calabria

Fifty-nine people, including a newborn baby and other children, have died after a wooden sailing boat believed to be carrying refugees crashed against rocks off the coast of Italy’s Calabria region.

Many of the bodies were reported to have washed up on a tourist beach near Steccato di Cutro, while others were found at sea.

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Tunisia’s president calls for halt to sub-Saharan immigration amid crackdown on opposition

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Kais Saied claims migrants are part of campaign to make country ‘purely African’ in move critics say is to distract from economic crisis

Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, has told a meeting of security officials that migrants are part of a wider campaign to change the demographic makeup of the country and make it “purely African”.

The president’s comments come alongside an extensive crackdown on critics and opposition figures in a campaign that human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have labelled a witch-hunt.

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Tens of thousands of refugees flee from Somaliland clashes

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Somalis arrive in Ethiopia from disputed town of Las Anod, where at least 82 people have died in fighting

More than 60,000 Somali refugees have fled to Ethiopia after an escalation in fighting in the town of Las Anod, in the Sool region, where tensions between local people and the governing Somaliland authorities have been building for weeks.

The UN said the refugees had arrived in part of Ethiopia that had been badly hit by drought after five consecutive failed rains, and that many people were sleeping in the open, or sheltering in schools and other public buildings.

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Refugee charity rejects Tory vice-chair’s claim they are ‘just as bad as people-smugglers’

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Care4Calais says it offers refugees aid and dignity and does not want them to cross Channel by dangerous means

A volunteer organisation has dismissed a claim by the new Conservative deputy chair that Calais refugee charities are “just as bad as people-smugglers”.

Lee Anderson, who was given the role by Rishi Sunak during the prime minister’s recent reshuffle, accused refugee organisations based in northern France of “fuelling” people’s desire to cross the English Channel in small boats.

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UN warns of ‘unconscionable’ cuts to Rohingya food rations as donations fall

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World Food Programme calls for urgent $125m injection after being forced into axing supplies into Bangladesh refugee camps by 17%

The UN has been forced to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees by 17% and has warned of “unconscionable” further cuts in April as a result of dwindling international donations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) said it needs $125m (£104m) urgently to avoid the further cuts.

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Leaders urged to ‘take a stand’ after violence outside Knowsley asylum hotel

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Charities condemn policies that ‘demonise’ refugees after home secretary accused of victim blaming

Political leaders must “take a clear stand” and condemn violence against asylum seekers, charities have said, after the home secretary was accused of victim blaming after a riot outside a hotel in Merseyside.

Refugee organisations have signed an open letter after “horrifying” scenes on Friday outside the Suites hotel in Knowsley, which is housing asylum seekers. Fireworks were thrown at police and a police van was attacked with hammers and set alight.

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Nearly 20,000 refugees to get same rights as other permanent residents after being kept ‘in limbo’

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Labor clears way for temporary protection and safe haven visa holders to apply for permanency

Nearly 20,000 refugees will soon be able to apply for permanency, giving them the same rights as permanent residents after being kept “in limbo”.

The changes – hailed by refugee advocates as “a victory of unity and compassion over division and fear” – were part a Labor election promise. They mean that about 19,000 temporary protection and safe haven enterprise visa holders will be eligible to apply for a permanent resolution of status visa.

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