Five drown in English Channel as UK advances deportation plan

United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak laid out the government’s extensive plan on Monday to deport illegal Rwandan migrants thanks to newly passed parliamentary legislation. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill is also meant to protect migrants from criminal trafficking in unseaworthy vessels across the English Channel, Sunak said. Hours after Sunak discussed the new legislation, French police said five more migrants died attempting to cross the channel to England, according to a local newspaper. Rescue efforts were made on the northern beach of Wimereux, where Mayor Jean-Luc Dubaele confirmed a four-year-old girl was among the deceased.

What is the deportation plan? Sunak said the government has over 2,000 detention cells and 200 case workers ready to process cases of detained illegal immigrants. Over two dozen courtrooms and 150 sitting judges are available to resolve any legal issues. An airfield with booked commercial flights and 500 trained personnel is set to escort migrants back to Rwanda. The first flight is expected to leave in July. Sunak said the timeline is later than he hoped because Labor Party legislators stalled the bill in the House of Lords.

United Nations officials criticized the legislation. The bill shifts away from Britain’s long traditions of giving refuge to those in need and marks a breach in the Refugee Convention, said High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. Grandi and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called on the government to enact a new plan for asylum seekers, which they said should respect international human rights law. Commercial airlines and aviation regulators who participate in flying the deported refugees could be deemed complicit in violating such laws, a panel of UN experts said Monday.

How could helping illegal migrants return be criminal or illegal? Sending asylum-seeking migrants back to countries where they are in danger would be a human rights violation, the panel said. The UK Supreme Court agreed in a 2023 ruling that returning refugees to Rwanda would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits torture or inhuman treatment.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Onize Ohikere’s report on a 2022 attempt to fly migrants back to Rwanda.