After 33 people were expelled from the flight, only four criminals were aboard the deportation flight for Jamaica yesterday.
Home Secretary Priti Patel described it as ‘absolutely galling’ that an airliner capable of seating 350 people chartered by the Home Office for as much as £300,000 was almost empty when it finally departed.
Last night Miss Patel pledged that the Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill would ‘make it easier to remove foreign criminals and prevent them from gaming the broken system’.
She said: ‘I make no apology for removing foreign national offenders. It is absolutely galling that, yet again, last-minute legal claims have stopped the removal of 33 people, including those guilty of abhorrent crimes such as murder and child sexual offences.’
After 33 people were expelled following human rights appeals, only four criminals from abroad were aboard a Jamaican deportation flight. The remaining 13 were taken off the plane yesterday.
A total of 33 criminals who had between them served sentences totalling 127 years were removed as a result of ‘last-minute legal claims’ – 13 in the 24 hours prior to departure.
Other would-be deportees have apparently been removed from the flight schedule due to Covid epidemic at Colnbrook. This is an immigration removal center near Heathrow Airport.
This meant that only four people remained at Birmingham Airport when the Airbus A350 took off in the wee hours of yesterday.
They had served sentences totalling 16 years and 3 months for ‘serious crimes’.
While the exact cost of hiring yesterday’s charter plane has not been revealed, previous flights have cost around £300,000, meaning the cost to the taxpayer could have been as high as £75,000 per criminal.
After the previous deportation effort in August resulted in only seven Jamaican nationals being aboard a charter flight which took off from Stansted airport, Miss Patel voiced her ‘deep anger and frustration’.
Priti Patel described it as ‘galling’ that an airliner capable of seating 350 people chartered by the Home Office for as much as £300,000 was almost empty when it finally departed
According to an analysis done by Movement For Justice campaigning organization, at least 10 of the people on the most recent original deportation lists arrived in the UK as minors. One had lived here since three months.
The Independent reports that Akem Finlay (31), was sentenced to six years in prison for GBH with intent, after abandoning his victim of 20 years for a life.
‘It’s been five years now since I served my sentence,’ he told the online paper last week. ‘I have changed.
‘I’ve moved away from that kind of thing.
‘But I haven’t been given a second chance in my adult life to turn things around.’ On Tuesday activists had blocked the road outside Brook House, an immigration detention centre near Gatwick, in an attempt to prevent the deportations.
They claim ministers have broken a deal with Jamaica to stop the deportation of criminals coming to the UK from Jamaica.
While the cost of hiring yesterday’s charter plane has not been revealed, previous flights have cost around £300k, meaning cost to taxpayers could have been as high as £75k per criminal
Campaign group Detention Action last night branded Government policy ‘a shambles’.
‘Each time the Home Office tries to force black people from their homes in the UK, they meet more opposition,’ it boasted.
But Matt Vickers, Conservative MP for Stockton South, last night accused the activists of creating ‘a real danger to the safety of the people of this country’.
‘They frustrate and abuse the system, often citing nonsense about racism or colonialism, to keep highly dangerous criminals in the UK at the taxpayer’s expense,’ he said.
‘I am certain that the Government has the backing of the majority of the people in this country to deport criminals, many who have committed similarly horrendous crimes.
‘I urge the Home Office to do the right thing by the British people, ignore these groups and push on with deporting criminals who have no right to be here.’