How did 500 foreign criminals due to be deported go missing?
THE Home Office has lost track of hundreds of dangerous foreign criminals awaiting deportation from Britain.
Instead of being locked up until they are thrown out of the UK, the offenders, including rapists, robbers and paedophiles, vanished after being let out of prison.
Immigration chiefs lost track of the foreign national offenders (FNOs) after they completed their sentences and were released into the community – meaning they could still pose a threat.
Figures obtained using freedom of information laws revealed that 494 criminals absconded between January 2014 and March 2016.
As of last month, 211 were still missing – up to four years after contact with officials ceased.
However, the numbers could be even higher. In November, a report by David Bolt, chief inspector of borders and immigration, found that in April last year 753 FNOs were missing after being freed from jail. Guidelines say offenders who complete sentences should be detained only if there is a realistic prospect of deporting them immediately.
It means that thousands of criminals are placed back in the community with a request to keep in touch with immigration officials but many slip off the radar. Offenders are recorded as absconders if their whereabouts are unknown and attempts to re-establish contact have failed.
Figures just released by the Home Office – after it spent nearly two years trying to wriggle out of publishing them – revealed that 169 FNOs absconded in 2014, followed by 250 in 2015, and 75 in the first three months of 2016. Of the total, 196 men and at least 15 women had not been found by February 9 this year.
Foreign criminals with convictions for violence, rape and other sexual crimes, fraud, money laundering, possession of weapons, burglary and forgery were among those missing.
The Home Office refused to provide details of the nationalities of those on the run, claiming it could undermine agreements with other countries and hamper the operation of immigration controls.
Mr Bolt’s report warned that there was ‘little evidence’ effective action was being taken to find the vast bulk of absconders – FNOs can fail to attend meetings up to 19 times before the alarm is raised.
A third of planned removals of criminals failed – 7,772 out of 24,289 dating back to 2014-15. A team set up to cut immigration abuse by finding missing FNOs had only 11 staff.
Tory MP Tim Loughton, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: ‘It is extraordinary that the Home Office has allowed so many convicted foreign offenders who clearly have no place to remain in the UK to roam free to do as they wish whilst paperwork for their deportation is being sorted.
‘There should be a fast-track deportation system from the prison to the plane with clear information sharing to make sure they do not gain entry again.’
The Home Office said more than 41,000 foreign offenders have been removed from the UK since 2010, including a record 6,346 in 2016-17.
A spokesman said: ‘This week, like every week, more than 100 foreign criminals will be removed from the UK. We never give up trying to locate absconders and we are overhauling the reporting system.’
She said measures introduced in the Immigration Act 2016 meant that in the future all non-detained foreign nationals subject to deportation proceedings would be fitted with an electronic tag and monitored.