The British government has lost hundreds of migrants staying at supposedly “secure” hotels, many of whom have not been properly identified or even had their photographs and fingerprints taken.
“[T]he Home Office has failed over the past three years to move from a crisis response to having better systems and procedures in place and treating this as business as usual,” warned David Neal, former Provost Marshal of the Royal Military Police (RMP) and currently the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, in his latest Inspection Report, taking aim at the government department led by Home Secretary Priti Patel MP which has broad responsibility for border control, policing, and national security.
“Data, the lifeblood of decision-making, is inexcusably awful… Biometrics, such as taking fingerprints and photographs, are not always recorded,” Neal went on, pulling no punches.
“The Home Office told our inspectors that 227 migrants had absconded from secure hotels between September 2021 and January 2022, and not all had been biometrically enrolled. Over a five-week period alone, 57 migrants had absconded – two-thirds of whom had not had their fingerprints and photographs taken,” he lamented.
“Put simply, if we don’t have a record of people coming into the country, then we do not know who is threatened or who is threatening.”
Over 26,000 People Being Housed Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation in Britainhttps://t.co/9aaXxJLgHg
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) July 22, 2022
The fact that illegal migrants being accommodated at taxpayers’ expense in hotels — already a highly controversial policy, given the eye-watering costs involved and the fact that some have intimidated young girls and even embarked on stabbing sprees in the communities landed with them — are going missing before they have been properly vetted and identified or even had biometric data that could be used to identify them further down the line obviously poses a grave threat to national security and public safety, given some could be terrorists and violent criminals.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage, who helped to put the issues of migrant boats crossing the English Channel and hosted in hotels, in particular, on the map, said the revelations in Neal’s report “surpassed[d] every single worst fear I’ve had” on social media.
Unlike many migration-related issues facing Britain, the former UKIP and Brexit Party supremo was candid that this one could not be pinned on the European Court of Human Rights, to which Britain remains subject, the French authorities, “or anybody else”.
“It’s the fault of us. The British government, and in particular, the Home Office,” he said frankly.
“How many of those that have come believe in the ISIS ideology, and could pose us with a terrorist threat in the years to come?” Farage demanded.
“[E]ven if it’s one per cent, that’s one per cent too many,” he asserted.
Farage said that the “most extraordinary” thing about the story is the fact that “there’s no debate about it in the Tory leadership contest. Neither Rishi Sunak nor Liz Truss want to discuss either the huge level, record levels, of legal immigration, or the huge numbers of illegal immigrants coming into Britain. It’s not even been discussed,” he observed.
“I mean, frankly, I think this should be called an emergency. Huge numbers of undocumented young men coming into this country, disappearing, we don’t even know who they are. This Conservative government, this Home Office, are now a threat to our national security. It’s an almost unbelievable situation,” he warned.
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