Freed to walk our streets, the 4,000 foreign criminals we can’t deport

THE number of foreign prisoners is growing and attempts to remove them are often futile, a secret Government report warns.

The Home Office document, marked restricted but leaked ahead of a crunch vote by MPs, reveals there are about 12,000 foreign prisoners in the UK – and another ,000 who have been freed after serving a sentence but not deported.

Their offences include murder, manslaughter, rape of a minor and kidnap.

Some foreigners have avoided deportation using the controversial Article 8 protection for family life, contained in the European Convention on Human Rights. Others are allowed to remain here due to the poor human rights records of their home countries, such as Iran and Somalia.

The leak came as rebel Tory MPs will today threaten to back a Commons motion that would make it easier to deport foreign criminals after their sentence.

Dominic Raab, whose move is supported by more than 100 MPs, said the leaked document was ‘a chilling analysis of the growing threat of foreign national criminals’.

His amendment to the Government’s Immigration Bill would require judges to deport foreign criminals jailed for over a year, unless they were at risk of torture or

‘Chilling analysis of a

growing threat’

murder on return. It would effectively overrule Article 8 of the Convention.

David Cameron has indicated some sympathy with the idea but Home Secretary Theresa May is said to have vetoed Government support for the change.

The report, which appears to date from 2012, says there were 10,779 foreigners in UK prisons. About 1, 30 were still detained pending removal and ,238 had been ‘non-detained’ as there was ‘no reasonable expectation of removal in the short term’.

Of these, 111 had committed major crimes such as murder, rape, manslaughter, sexual offences against children or terrorist offences.

A Home Office source said last night that the department ‘doesn’t recognise’ the content of the leaked report and it was ‘not true’ that deportation efforts to some countries were becoming futile.