Patel plans Greek-style clampdown on migrants

Asylum seekers will have to obey strict rules at new holding centres or face rejection

PRITI PATEL is planning a Greek-style crackdown on migrants with new restrictions on asylum seekers amid an escalating European crisis.

Channel migrants held in new purpose-built reception centres will have to obey strict rules or risk losing their right to claim asylum.

The Home Secretary plans to model the new centres on camps for asylum seekers being built by the Greeks where migrants face routine checks on their movements and curfews to prevent absconding.

A government source said: “If they breach the rules, it could affect their asylum claim. You would be told that you would have to be in by this time. That’s fair rules for operating if you provide food and accommodation. The Greeks have things like timings.”

Migrants could also be issued with “asylum apps” to track the progress of their applications on smartphones or computers in the centres.

Ms Patel has been impressed by the way Greece has digitised its asylum application process from start to finish to track cases, speed up decisions and save millions of euros wasted on unnecessary paperwork.

It comes in the wake of the attempted bombing in Liverpool by a failed asylum seeker who was still in the UK seven years after his application was first rejected. Emad al-swealmeen is understood to have had mental health issues which were exacerbated by the drawnout process.

Speaking on a trip to the US, Ms Patel hailed Greece for spurning the EU’S lax approach to border controls and taking a “very different” approach which includes the controversial “push back” tactics of turning boats back at sea.

“They have not decided to sit behind the EU bloc of competency,” said Ms Patel, who earlier this week launched a ferocious attack on the EU’S open borders – the so-called Schengen zone – for fuelling a “mass migration crisis” that has spurred a record surge in illegal Channel crossings.

More than 24,500 migrants have reached the UK already this year, nearly treble the total for the whole of 2020, including more than 5,000 in November, the highest monthly figure ever, despite the colder weather and riskier sea conditions.

It comes as Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, backed calls for tougher controls and warned freedom of movement in the EU would be “finished” if its leaders fail to

ruthlessly protect the bloc’s borders. “We will not just throw open the doors and let the migrants in. EU leaders know that if that happens then Schengen is finished. Freedom of movement is finished,” Mr Mitsotakis said.

“Countries such as Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and others will simply throw up the borders. We need strong external borders.”

Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, has lured in thousands of migrants from countries including Iraq before forcing them to the borders with EU members Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. The situation on the border with Poland has reached crisis point in the past fortnight.

It also emerged yesterday that Germany has become a hub for migrants with 60 per cent of those trying to cross the Channel entering France on the day of their attempt.

Crime gangs are basing migrants and dinghies in Germany before transporting them at night through Belgium into France to cross the Channel.

“Germany has become the established base for criminal gangs and gangs matching [migrants to boats],” a government source said. They warned that the French were struggling to contain migrants who are becoming increasingly violent.

Ms Patel has raised Germany’s role with her German counterpart.

President Macron accused Britain yesterday of swinging “between partnership and provocation” over the flow of Channel migrants. British officials are concerned, however, at the failure of the French to deploy specialist forces to the northern coast as they did at the height of the 2015 migrant crisis when 3,500 elite Compagnie Republicaine de Securite with mobile hit squads were on the ground.

Only 200 extra reserve Gendarmes have been deployed so far under the £54 million deal between the UK and France to boost patrols and surveillance on the north French beaches.