The Home Office of Britain announced on Wednesday that it has started the process of detaining migrants in order to relocate them to Rwanda.
The aim is to transport flights to Rwanda within 9-11 weeks, as promised by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. This is being done to discourage migrant boat crossings into Britain.
The Home Office stated that its operational teams have been working quickly and safely to detain individuals who are eligible for relocation to Rwanda. They also mentioned that more work will be done in the upcoming weeks.
The British government has increased the number of spaces available for detentions to 2,200. They have also trained 200 new caseworkers and 500 highly trained escorts to carry out the detentions.
The British government announced on Wednesday that Rwanda has a good history of successfully resettling over 135,000 refugees. They also mentioned that Rwanda is prepared to accept thousands more refugees who are unable to stay in Britain.
“Our Rwanda Partnership is a groundbreaking effort to address the worldwide issue of illegal migration, and we have put in a lot of effort to create strong new laws to support it,” stated Home Secretary James Cleverly.
“This work is difficult, but we are fully dedicated to putting the policy into action. Our goal is to prevent boats from coming and to disrupt the operations of human smuggling gangs.”
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If the Labor Party wins the next election, they have stated that they will stop the Rwanda policy.
Labour Party deputy national campaign coordinator Ellie Reeves refused to confirm whether the party would release migrants who are currently detained under their policy, despite their stated intentions.
“We want to send people back to their own countries if their claims have been rejected. That’s why we would create return agreements and hire a thousand case workers,” Reeves explained to the BBC.
The chief executive of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, stated that the government should not depend on detaining refugees. Instead, they should focus on processing asylum claims in a quick and fair manner.
“The government’s decision to detain people is making men, women, and children who have escaped war and persecution and come to the U.K. for safety feel scared, upset, and very anxious,” he said. In April, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised that the deportation of Rwandan migrants would happen quickly after Parliament approved a law allowing the deportations.
He said that the deportation detention roundups would have happened earlier if the Labor Party had not delayed the bill in an attempt to prevent the resettlement flights. On Sunday, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris announced that he is requesting his government to create a plan for sending asylum seekers back to Britain.
According to him, a new plan in Britain to send migrants back to Rwanda has caused 80% of recent asylum seekers in Ireland to enter through the land border with Northern Ireland. However, Britain has denied this.
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