Half of Foreign Criminals Who Absconded Before Deportation in 2010 Still at Large

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - MAY 21: Immigration enforcement officers listen to a brief on the
Richard Pohle - WPA Pool/Getty
Victoria Friedman

The UK government’s Home Office had admitted that less than half of the 760 foreign criminals who went missing in 2010 ahead of deportation are still at large.

Out of the 391 criminals still on the run, 36 are considered “high harm” to the public, including paedophiles, rapists, and violent criminals, according to a Freedom of Information request by The Mirror.

The Home Office has refused to release details of the missing criminals, citing data protection laws, and their names and mugshots having still not been released.

Successive governments in the UK have failed to thoroughly deport foreign criminals, with one in six foreign offenders having absconded before deportation, according to National Audit Office data from 2014.

Recently-released statistics showed that between 2014 and 2016 the Home Office lost track of 500 foreign criminals because the department took too long to deport them after their release from prison.

Deporting foreign criminals was meant to become a priority for the government when, in 2006 under a Labour government, it emerged that 1,023 foreign criminals were released without being considered for deportation.

In 2008, the then-opposition Conservative Party alleged that a further 946 foreign criminals could not be deported because the Labour government did not know what countries they came from.

However, deportation of foreign criminals is not always possible, if it is deemed to be in breach of a criminal’s ‘human rights’.

Iraqi-Kurd failed asylum seeker Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who hit a child and left her to die under his car when he fled the scene, was allowed to stay in the UK.

Ibrahim did not have a driver’s licence — and was banned from driving — when he hit 12-year-old Amy Houston in Blackburn in 2003 and then walked over her as she lay crying in pain with the full weight of the engine block on her body.

She died later in hospital, and Ibrahim, who arrived in the UK on the back of a lorry in 2001, served four months in prison for driving while disqualified and failing to stop after an accident.

After his release, he met and had children with an English woman, and won his right to stay in 2009 after arguing that he had a right to a family life under the Human Rights Act.

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