UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman said on Wednesday the government’s proposal to stop almost all migrants ever claim asylum were legal despite warnings that the legislation would violate international law and be challenged in court.
Lawyers and charities said the plans would breach the UN Refugee Convention, which was introduced after many countries rejected Jewish refugees during the Second World War.
Braverman wrote on the first page of the bill that the plans could violate the government’s Human Rights Act but said she included that statement “out of an abundance of caution.”
“We are confident that we are following the law, national and international,” she told the BBC. “But we also push the boundaries and we test innovative and new legal arguments.”
The new legislation is the latest in a series of controversial immigration policies put forward by the Conservative government under successive prime ministers aimed at stopping people arriving on England’s shores by small boats. Last year, the government announced a plan to send some of them to Rwanda.
Under the government’s plans, almost all asylum seekers who reach Britain in small boats will be held without bail before being deported to their home country or, if this is not safe, another destination such as Rwanda.
They will also lose the right to challenge their deportation while in the UK, and once deported they will automatically be banned from returning.
Last year, a record 45,000 people came to Britain in small boats across the Channel, mainly from France. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said finding a solution is a top priority, as the government spends more than £2 billion ($2.4 billion) a year to accommodate them.
Anger over immigration has played a key role in British politics over the past decade and Sunak’s Conservatives hope that by taking a hard line they can rebuild their popularity as they trail the opposition Labor party by around 20 percentage points in opinion polls.
The legislation has been criticized as unenforceable by opposition politicians and migration experts.
The UN refugee agency says the bill constitutes an “asylum ban” and is a clear violation of the UN Refugee Convention.
Sunder Katwala, director of identity and immigration think tank British Future, said in a blog post that “the pledge to detain and remove all people crossing the Channel has no prospect of being honored in the next two years.”
Plans to deport some asylum seekers to Rwanda have been stalled by legal challenges, including by the European Court of Human Rights, which last year blocked the first flight of detainees from taking off for Kigali.
In the absence of other agreements, this means that tens of thousands of new arrivals could end up in detention. If all those who arrived in small boats last year were detained, it would be equivalent to around half of the UK’s total prison population.
Braverman struggled to clarify whether four-time Olympic champion Mo Farah would have been deported as soon as he turned 18 under the proposed rules. Farah revealed last year that he was trafficked to Britain as a child.
She also criticized Gary Lineker, the former England footballer and TV presenter, who said the government’s comments and plans resembled those of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. She said his comments were “inappropriate” and “disappointing”.
That tweet and others in response to the bill the BBC was quoted as saying it would have a “frank conversation” with Lineker, who leads the network’s sports coverage and is bound by its impartiality guidelines.
—With additional files from the Associated Press