Asylum: Deportation

(asked on 23rd February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people whose claim for asylum was unsuccessful have been deported by her Department since 2019.


Answered by
Tom Pursglove Portrait
Tom Pursglove
Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
This question was answered on 1st March 2022

The Home Office publishes data on small boat arrivals in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK’ release. Data on the number of small boat arrivals is published in the ‘Irregular migration summary tables’, including breakdowns by nationality, age and sex. The latest data cover the period up to the end of December 2021.

The Home Office publishes data on asylum and returns in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release’.

  • Data on asylum applications and initial decisions on asylum applications are published in tables Asy_D01 and Asy_D02 of the ‘asylum and resettlement detailed datasets’.
  • Data on appeals and appeal outcomes are published in tables Asy_D06 and Asy_D07 of the detailed datasets (available at the above link). For appeals, please note that most, but not all, appeals will relate to those who have had their claim refused at initial decision; a small number of appeals relate to cases which received a grant of leave other than asylum.
  • Data on asylum-related returns by type of return (including enforced returns, of which ‘deportations’ are a subset) are published in table Ret_05 in the returns summary tables. The latest data relate to the year ending September 2021.

The term 'deportations' refers to a legally-defined subset of returns, which are enforced either following a criminal conviction, or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is conducive to the public good. The published statistics refer to enforced returns which include deportations, as well as cases where a person has breached UK immigration laws and those removed under other administrative and illegal entry powers that have declined to leave voluntarily. Figures on deportations, which are a subset of enforced returns, are not separately available.

The Home Office seeks to return people who do not have any legal right to stay in the UK, which includes people who:

  1. enter, or attempt to enter, the UK illegally (including people entering clandestinely and by means of deception on entry);
  2. overstay their period of legal right to remain in the UK;
  3. breach their conditions of leave;
  4. are subject to deportation action; for example, due to a serious criminal conviction, and
  5. have been refused asylum.

Asylum-related returns relate to cases where there has been an asylum claim at some stage prior to the return. This will include asylum seekers whose asylum claims have been refused, and who have exhausted any rights of appeal, those returned under third country provisions, as well as those granted asylum/protection, but removed for other reasons (such as criminality).

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