Silent Majority Speaks

Deportation farce as illegal immigrants get "tip-offs"

By David Williams and Matthew Hickly, Daily Mail, May 22, 2004

Hundreds of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers are vanishing after the Government ruled they should receive notice they are about to be arrested and kicked out of Britain. Under the directive. all illegal entrants, immigrants facing deportation and those overstaying their visas, who have families with children aged under 18, must be told of their imminent detention.

Astonished Immigration Officers believe the rule is simply 'tipping-off' illegals. They say that hundreds have vanished rather than wait for the 'knock on the door' that signals being deported. They fear that the Home Office ruling will mean immigrants disappearing into the black economy, and being 'lost forever' in the immigration system.

Details of the policy are contained in a confidential Home Office memo obtained by the Daily Mail. It says families with dependent children must receive a 'pastoral visit' prior to being detained by police and immigration officers. Immigration Officers say they have been told the visits should be a week before the planned arrest and deportation.

The memo say:"There has been a Ministerial undertaking that pastoral visits should be undertaken prior to all family detention visits. Pastoral visits allow for the gathering of information regarding the circumstances of the family concerned and ensure that important issues such as medical or special needs are taken into account when deciding on arrest, detention, transportation and/or removal."

The memo, headed Family Removal Policy, provides guidance to enforcement staff dealing with "illegal entrants, overstayers, a person in breach of their conditions of leave, a person who has gained leave by deception and deportees."

Officers are angry that the warning comes amid what they describe as 'major problems' en-gulfing enforced deportations and their belief that more people than ever before are work-ing illegally in the black economy. Home Office officials admit that hundreds of thousands of bogus asylum seekers have gone underground and are living here illegally.

Earlier this year David Blunkett confessed he had 'no idea' how many failed asylum seekers were still in Britain - often years after their claims were rejected as unfounded - because the number of deportions has lagged far behind the number of failed claims for years. One immigration officer said:"This is simply ridiculous. We have to go around there and warn them that we will be back in a week. When we go back the next week, they're gone. The situation is hard enough and everone involved at the sharp end is furious about this.

"We smply cannot believe Ministers could make a decision which does nothing more than tip people off they are to be arrested. It is apparently a welfare thing. We cannot just turn up on their doorstep and tell them that it's time to go. We have to give them time to prepare and get ready for the trauma of it all."

The leaked memo says any concerns officers may have must be submitted in a report to an immigration inspector who will decide whether or not a pastoral visit should be undertaken.

Former Home Secretary Jack Straw set a target of removing 30,000 bogus refugees each year, but that ambitious goal was quietly dropped, and now there are no targets at all.

Numbers of asylum deportations rose last year to 12,490, not including dependents - although that was still less than a quarter of the number who had their claims rejected over the same period.

The Home Office refused to comment on the leaked document, but questioned whether 'pastoral rights' were leading large numbers of families to abscond. A spokesman said: "This would not be the first time a family would know they were going to be deported, and is isn't that easy for a family to disappear. The Immigration Service seeks to remove people as safely and humanely as possible which, where necessary, can involve enforced return or detention. Where circumstances suggest is is appropriate, discussions with a family about how they will leave the UK may take place."

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