Home Secretary Theresa May has been accused of suppressing a report that found hundreds of foreign criminals were escaping deportation from Britain. John Vine, who heads the UK’s border service, claims that he gave the critical report to the Home Secretary in the summer, but it has only just been released.
He said that there was ‘no reason’ why the report should not have been published earlier, and also accused ministers of deliberately delaying the publication of other reports in order to ‘reduce their impact.
According to the Mail, Mr Vine’s report claimed that a new government scheme called Operation Nexus – where immigration officials supplied information to local police stations on suspects’ immigration status – was failing, with many foreign criminals being released back into the country.
Although the scheme did have a “positive impact” in London, with the number of criminals being deported rising by 158 percent from 2011-12 to 2013-14, there were serious failings in other areas. In the West Midlands, for example, nearly half of foreign nationals detained by police were released before their immigration status was checked.
Other suspects elsewhere in the country were released because staff shortages meant no immigration officers were available to check their status. Breitbart London reported that the men broke into the house of Paul Kohler, smashing a heavy cabinet on his head and duct taping his wife to a chair. The couple were only saved when their daughter barricaded herself into her room and called the emergency services.
The report comes just a week after it emerged that a violent Polish gang who attacked a university professor had previous criminal convictions in their home country, yet went unchecked.
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