UK Home Secretary Boasts of Giving Immigration Officials More ‘Teeth’ in Letter to UK PM

The UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd reportedly told the Prime Minister of United Kingdom, Theresa May in a letter that she would give immigration officials more “teeth” to deport illegal immigrants in the country to accelerate their deportation program, The Guardian reported.

As the Prime Minister of United Kingdom and even as the former home secretary, May’s focus was on decreasing net immigration and deporting illegal immigrants. Rudd, who is taking the legacy forward, told May that she would fuel the deportation program by shifting money for crime-fighting to her immigration enforcement program.

“Illegal and would-be illegal migrants and the public more widely, need to know that our immigration system has ‘teeth’, and that if people do not comply on their own we will enforce their return, including through arresting and detaining them. That is why I will be refocusing immigration enforcement’s work to concentrate on enforced removals,” Rudd wrote in the letter, according to The Guardian.

The letter, which was leaked, was sent in January 2017. It comes amid the Windrush scandal. Immigrants, who settled in the United Kingdom came to the United Kingdom between 1948 and 1971 from Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados when the country had severe shortage of labor after the WWII.

The name Windrush generation comes from the HMT Empire Windrush, a ship, on which West Indian people came to England. The people of this generation were recently threatened with deportation in a bid to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants in the country. However, May had to issue and apology for the way the Windrush generation people were treated and announced on April 20th that they will be compensated.

Meanwhile, Rudd’s leaked private memo to May about immigration said that Rudd promised that 10 per cent more people than May had managed, during her tenure as the home secretary, would be removed either forcibly or voluntarily. Rudd’s goal was to throw out an extra 4,000 illegal migrants every year, as per the report.

“Everything I have outlined above is aimed not just at radically reshaping and refocusing immigration enforcement but at increasing the public’s confidence in our immigration system,” Rudd concluded in the letter to May, as per the report.

There are almost 100,000 of undocumented Indians in the United Kingdom, according to a top UK government functionary, Hindustan Times reported earlier. However, this number was grossly over-reported. According to new exit checks at Britain’s border, there are only 4,600 international students from India overstaying their visa, according to the UK Home Office.

Meanwhile, the UK Home Office is encouraging those seeking asylum in the United Kingdom to go back to their countries before their cases are even taken up by the department officials. The Home Office is voluntarily giving contact numbers and information to asylum seekers about the ways they can head back home before their cases are considered.