Rwanda starts selling migrant properties amid delays in deportation flights
PROPERTIES on a new housing estate in Rwanda earmarked for migrants deported from the UK have been sold to locals amid delays in flights to the central African nation.
Some of the 163 affordable homes on the estate in the capital Kigali have been sold off as the Government has been forced to redraw its plans after the Supreme Court ruled that the scheme was unlawful because Rwanda was unsafe for migrants.
Yesterday, Rishi Sunak met Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, in No 10 where they agreed they were still “looking forward” to the first deportation flights taking off to the east African country in the spring.
Adhi-rwanda, the housing developer behind the terraced homes in the Bwiza Riverside estate, was quoted by The Times as saying 70 per cent of the homes had been sold to “private people who want to live in them”.
The Rwandan government disputed the figure but did not deny the sales. It said that it was just one of the housing options where migrants will live alongside Rwandans.
“None of the assigned housing estates were ever meant to be only for migrants. The idea is to integrate migrants into Rwandan communities, not create migrant ghettos,” said Yolande Makolo, the chief government spokesman.
The disclosure is an embarrassment for the Government as it seeks to drive its Rwanda Bill through Parliament next week after it suffered a succession of defeats in the House of Lords. Deportation flights have been grounded since June 2022 when a single judge from the European Court of Human Rights issued a rule 39 injunction blocking their departure to Rwanda.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, has said that she was “disappointed” by the apparent lowering of expectations from her original desire to see “large numbers” of migrants deported to Rwanda on a “large number of flights”.
Mr Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda bill is expected to receive royal assent by the end of the month – after a further round of parliamentary ping pong next week between the Commons and Lords.
Speaking on LBC, Mrs Braverman said: “I do believe that we may well get a flight off, a token flight with a low number of passengers on it, to Rwanda. That’s not deterrence.
“The only way we generate a deterrent effect to stop people getting on the boats and coming into the UK illegally is regular flights, with hundreds of passengers on those flights being sent to Rwanda on a regular basis.”