Migrants swap hotel rooms to dodge deportation

MIGRANTS have dodged deportation from Britain simply by swapping rooms in taxpayer-funded hotels, it can be revealed.

Home Office officials have been unable to locate failed asylum seekers because they were not living in allocated rooms.

One MP last night described the ‘farcical’ situation as ‘Carry On Up The Home Office’. The charade emerged when officers from the Immigration Enforcement unit were sent to migrant hotels with authorisation to take specific migrants to the airport for deportation. The foreign nationals had either exhausted the appeals process after being refused refugee status, or had been ruled ineligible for reasons such as holding a criminal record.

But in a number of cases migrants had secretly moved to a different room after an informal ‘swap’ with another migrant at the same premises. Attempts to locate them had to be abandoned due to lack of manpower, sources said. Even though the Home Office gathers biometrics on all Channel migrants it would have proved impossible to fingerprint hundreds of occupants to trace the missing person.

Migrants housed at hotels are free to come and go, so enforcement teams cannot even be sure the person they are seeking is on the premises. It is feared deportations under the Rwanda scheme will be hampered by room-swapping, insiders said. Natalie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover, said: ‘This is a complete farce. It’s “Carry On Up The Home Office”. There clearly needs to be a big shake-up.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘Last year we removed over 24,000 people with no right to remain, including 5,000 asylum related returns.’