‘Aint Gonna Work!’ UK Signs £120m Deal to House Illegal Boat Migrants in Rwanda in Latest Harebrained Scheme

SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 2: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secreta
Hannah McKay - WPA Pool/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Boris Johnson’s fledgling government has agreed to send £120 million to Rwanda for a trial scheme to house male migrants who illegally cross the English Channel, however, there are concerns that the plan is doomed from the start.

Following renewed calls for his resignation altering being fined by the police for violating his own lockdown restrictions and looming local elections, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government is set to announce a swath of policies that will supposedly stem the tide of the growing migrant crisis, which has seen over 5,000 illegals land on British shores since the start of the year.

Home Secretary Priti Patel flew to Rwanda in order to reportedly sign the £120 million deal with the East African nation for male boat migrants to be flown and housed there while their asylum claims are processed, according to The Times.

Despite the establishment media convention for highlighting pictures of children and women crossing the Channel, the vast majority of illegal boat migrants are in fact young men, with over 90 per cent of the 28,526 migrants who crossed last year being males between the age of 18 and 39.

In response to the growing migrant crisis, the government has thrown out several proposals like the Rwanda plan in recent years, including sending them to Albania, setting up wave machines, and even housing migrants on floating asylum centres. Yet, none of these plans have come to fruition and the waves of migrants has only continued to increase in scale.

Announcing the deal on Thursday morning, Boris Johnson said: “This innovative approach will provide safe and legal routes for asylum while disrupting the business model of the [people smuggling] gangs.”

Should the latest attempt to deter future illegals after years of the government failing to take back control of Britain’s borders actually succeed, the government would send more taxpayer cash to Rwanda to continue the scheme.

However, despite the pomp from the government, there is scepticism as to whether the plan will ever get off the ground and questions as to its long-term viability.

Migration Watch UK chairman Alp Mehmet said that the plan could “help to stem this vile trade”, noting the successes of offshore processing in Australia. Yet the think tank chief said that “more details” will be needed to be provided.

Brexit leader Nigel Farage said that he “would be surprised if any of those flights take off,” with even standard deportation flights for criminals often being blocked by last-minute appeals by activist attorneys.

“If — and I really mean if — within the next week we start seeing plane loads being taken to Rwanda, that may well act as a short-term deterrent. After all, why would you pay a criminal trafficker 3,000 euros, 5,000 euros if you thought immediately you would be sent to Rwanda,” he said.

Yet, Mr Farage said that long-term, the plan “aint gonna work”, given that despite voting to leave the European Union six years ago and formally leaving the bloc two years ago, the UK is still bound by the European Court on Human Rights.

“It’s difficult to think of a country with a much worse recent human rights record than Rwanda and it’s only a matter of time before we start to get stories from camps in Rwanda about abuses of all kinds and that would lead I think to some sense of international outrage,” the Brexiteer warned.

He argued that as soon as one case of abuse is reported from Rwanda, human rights lawyers will launch suits with the court in Strasbourg to prevent further flights.

“If we’re really going to get back control of our borders, we must get rid of the Human Rights Act, we must get back to the principles of liberty, freedom, and justice by which we’ve lived for many centuries in this country,” Farage said.

The only way of actually stopping the record waves of illegal migrants, Mr Farage argued, is to immediately send them back to France, which has also taken millions from the British taxpayer to halt illegal migrants with minimal results.

The expected announcement from the government comes after over 600 illegals crossed the Channel on Wednesday, a daily high for the year. The latest arrivals take the total for the year to over 5,000.

On top of the Rwanda Scheme, Prime Minister Boris Johnson — who is facing increased political pressure after being fined by the police for boozy parties in Downing Street during the lockdown — laid out plans to further target the people smuggling gangs who facilitate the flow of illegals across the English Channel, including using the Royal Navy to coordinate operations.

The PM is also set to announce that those migrants who are not shipped off to Rwanda will be housed in “closed” centres in Britain rather than being held in hotels or council flats, with the first centre likely to be a former RAF station in Linton-on-Ouse, in North Yorkshire.

The government has used such facilities in the past, notably the former barracks in Folkestone, which since its conversion into a migrant holding centre has been rife with violent outbursts from the migrants contained inside.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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