Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced a clampdown on illegal migration, including recruiting 100 new investigation and intelligence officers to target organised crime networks.
The measures also include plans for a large surge in enforcement and returns flights, with the aim of putting removals at their highest level since 2018, as well as increasing detention capacity and implementing sanctions against employers who hire workers illegally.
The plans come after hundreds of refugees came to the UK via small boats over the last week alone.
Cooper said: “We are taking strong and clear steps to boost our border security and ensure the rules are respected and enforced.
“Our new Border Security Command is already gearing up, with new staff being urgently recruited and additional staff already stationed across Europe, working with European enforcement agencies to find every route in smashing the criminal smuggling gangs organising dangerous boat crossings which undermine our border security and putting lives at risk.
“By increasing enforcement capabilities and returns, we will establish a system that is better controlled and managed, in place of the chaos that has blighted the system for far too long.”
READ MORE: Tony Blair calls for Keir Starmer to be tough on immigration, crime and ‘wokeism’
Charity accuses government of ‘reheating’ Tory immigration rhetoric
The government’s proposals have attracted criticism from Amnesty International UK, which accused Labour of “reheating” Conservative rhetoric over border security.
Steve Valdez-Symonds, refugee and migrant rights programme director at the charity, said: “People in urgent need ‒ including those fleeing war and persecution in places like Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran ‒ will keep coming to the UK and other countries, and the government needs to establish safe routes that reduce the perils of dangerous border crossings and the risk of exploitation by ruthless smuggling gangs.
“This ‘securitised’ approach to asylum and immigration will simply deter and punish many of the people most in need of crossing borders, people who are therefore often most vulnerable to criminal exploitation.
“Increasing immigration powers ‒ including to detain people ‒ rather than making sure existing powers are only used where that is necessary and fair has for decades rewarded Home Office inefficiency and injustice.
“A new set of ministers promoting an age-old message of fear and hostility regarding some of the most victimised and traumatised people who may ever arrive in the UK, means that smuggling gangs and racist and Islamophobic hate-mongers at home are likely to feed off this to everyone’s detriment.”
The Home Office has been approached for comment.
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