Home Office releases footage and photos of previously secret, high-security removals
Videos and photos of foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers being deported from Britain have been published for the first time – revealing that up to five security escorts are needed for every migrant.
In an attempt to show Labour’s tougher approach to illegal migrants, the Home Office has released pictures showing five escorts in high-viz yellow vests with body-worn cameras surrounding a single migrant as he is ushered up the steps onto a chartered plane to be returned to his home country in Europe.
The previously secret, high-security deportation flights have been filmed for the first time as Sir Keir Starmer tries to head off the political threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and demonstrate to a sceptical public that Labour is getting tough on illegal migration.
It comes after Donald Trump’s administration last week published images of illegal US migrants being led single file onto a military transport plane.
However, unlike the UK, all the US migrants are prevented from escaping by chain shackles around their ankles and waist restraints clasping their hands to their bodies. A handful of armed soldiers are seen supervising the departure of up to nine migrants.
The privately contracted escorts used by the Home Office are supplied with waist and leg restraints and rigid-bar handcuffs to deal with “high-risk” criminals or asylum seekers who are judged liable to fight back and resist removal. But only one of the migrants in the footage was subject to these restraints.
The pictures – released as stills and video on the Home Office’s social media channels – show a flight of 47 foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers deported to an unnamed European destination. The video shows a coach that has pulled right up to the plane on the tarmac before each migrant is taken up the steps flanked by at least four escorts.
Any deportee assessed as high risk requires four escorts to accompany them on the entire flight, meaning a plane of 50 potentially violent migrants would require up to 200 security escorts on top of medics and interpreters.
Standard practice is for two of the four escorts to flank the migrant up the steps to the plane, with one ahead and one behind. A fifth will be on hand in case of violence, while three or four other security staff stand at the bottom and top of the steps.
In the US, migrants walk onto military aircraft.
For the British deportations, the steps are fully covered by an arched plastic tunnel from the bottom to the plane’s door to prevent the deportees from trying to jump off or falling to the ground.
About 10 per cent of migrants require force ranging from a “guiding hold” to waist or leg restraints or rigid bar handcuffs. In the rare cases where leg restraints are used, the migrants have to be carried onto the plane with an extra security officer dedicated to supporting their head and airway to prevent injury or choking.
Some of the escorts from the private contractor Miti Care and Custody Services wear body-worn cameras to record any assaults and to provide evidence if a migrant subsequently tries to sue for unnecessary use of force. It is understood there have been previous legal claims.
Force is said to be used as a “last resort” and must be “necessary, reasonable and proportionate”.
Long-haul charter flights can take three to four months to plan and fight legal challenges. A high-profile flight to Jamaica in 2021 left with just four people on board after 33 others were granted last-minute legal reprieves.
The UK images coincided with new data published by Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, showing that nearly 19,000 foreign criminals and migrants with no right to remain in the UK have been removed to Africa, Asia, Europe and South America since Labour won the election last July.
This included 5,074 enforced returns to the end of January, up 24 per cent compared with the same period 12 months previously, and the deportation of 2,925 foreign national offenders, up 21 per cent on the previous year.
The Home Office said it was the highest rate of returns since 2018 and included the four biggest charter deportation flights in the UK’s history, carrying a total of more than 850 people on board.
Ms Cooper said: “To rebuild public confidence in the immigration system, we need to show the rules are respected and enforced.
“That’s why, as part of the Government’s Plan for Change, we have put significant additional resources into immigration enforcement and returns, so those who have no right to be here, particularly those who have committed crimes in our country, are removed as swiftly as possible.
“I want to pay tribute to all the Immigration Enforcement staff and other officials in the Home Office who strive tirelessly every day to make our returns system work firmly, fairly and swiftly.”
The unprecedented release of the images coincided with the second reading of Labour’s border security bill, which introduces a raft of counter-terror style measures to combat people smugglers, including a new offence of selling boats and equipment for use by the gangs with a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “Rising removals is simply continuing the trend we started when in government, and yet Labour is still failing to deliver on a tougher border policy.
“Only one in every four of these claimed returns are actually enforced returns, the majority are conducted voluntarily. This is hardly a tough stance on the border when Labour still are failing to force illegals out of this country.
“Only a tiny fraction of these returns relate to small boat arrivals. They represent just 4 per cent of those arriving by small boat – how can Labour claim allowing 96 per cent of illegal small boat arrivals to stay is any kind of deterrent?”
