Labour is facing ridicule after Donald Trump signed a deal to deport migrants to Rwanda. Up to 250 failed asylum seekers will stay in facilities paid for by British taxpayers, including the infamous Hope Hostel in Kigali.
They will be sent to Rwanda under the US president’s mass removal programme. Former home secretary Sir James Cleverly said: “This was always likely to happen. Labour scrapped the scheme that we had paid for, didn’t tell the Rwandans until after they told the press, and sent a big invitation to the cross-Channel people smugglers.
“Labour wasted our money and the USA is making use of it.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer cancelled the Rwanda deportation scheme on his first day in office, describing it as a gimmick.
Labour claimed the Tories spent £700million on a deal in which just four failed asylum seekers voluntarily moving to Rwanda.
Yolande Makolo, the Rwandan government spokeswoman, said: “Rwanda has agreed with the United States to accept up to 250 migrants, in part because nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement and our societal values are founded on reintegration and rehabilitation.
“Under the agreement, Rwanda has the ability to approve each individual proposed for resettlement.
“Those approved will be provided with workforce training, healthcare and accommodation support to jump-start their lives in Rwanda, giving them the opportunity to contribute to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world over the last decade.”
It comes as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper faces mounting questions over the UK’s migrant deal with France.
The Home Secretary failed four times to confirm whether migrants will be returned to France this month.
Labour has been urged to recall Parliament to discuss the Channel migrant “emergency” after the number of arrivals surged past 25,000 in record time.
Insisting only that failed asylum seekers will be detained “in a matter of days”, Ms Cooper added she wanted to see the first returns “in a matter of weeks”.
Asked repeatedly when the first migrants will be sent back, the Home Secretary said: “The first detentions we want to take place in a matter of days and then we will be referring those cases immediately to France.
“There are then processes that we need to work through and we are ready to resist any legal challenge that comes forward as well.
“But we do want to see returns taking place in a matter of weeks. But we will need to work those processes through.”
Asked if returns to France would start in August, Ms Cooper said: “Again, we need to work those processes through, but we want to see the returns themselves take place as swiftly as possible.”
Ms Cooper refused to set a target number for returns, claiming that such information could benefit the smuggling gangs.
The Home Secretary told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There are a couple of things here. First of all we are not putting an overall figure on this programme.
“Of course, it will start with lower numbers and then build but we want to be able to expand it. We want to increase the number of people returned through this programme.
“But the reason for not setting out how many people it will be in a particular week or how many people on a particular day is because we know the criminal gangs will use this information, just like they use every other bit of information, in order to twist it, in order distort it and in order to make money.
“They will use it to plan when they send boats across. They will use it to drive the information, the advertising and the information that they use.”
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch warned that the Channel migrant crisis is ripping Britain’s communities apart.
She said a surge in small boat arrivals is “not affordable” and could lead to more crime.
The Conservative accused Keir Starmer and Yvette Cooper of fuelling an “explosion in the use” of taxpayer-funded hotels for asylum seekers because they have “failed to stop the boats”.
Mrs Badenoch dismissed claims successive Tory governments were to blame for the record asylum backlogs and accused Labour of “rubber-stamping all of the applications”.
She said: “If you were to speak to the mothers who were protesting outside the hotel in Epping, they will tell you that a crime had been committed and that’s what they’re protesting.”
Ministers should not be clamping down on those “expressing legitimate concerns”, she signalled, adding: “We need to make sure that we address those concerns, and what we’re not seeing from the Government is any kind of addressing of those concerns.
“We need to stop the boats. It is not affordable, it is not good for community cohesion, it is not good for crime, it is costing us a lot of money. We need to get a grip on this issue as quickly as possible.”
But Mrs Badenoch dismissed claims Tory plans to end the small boats crisis had led to a record asylum backlog.
There were 50,976 outstanding appeals as of March, which is almost double the number compared with 2024 and seven times higher than in 2023, figures show.
It is the highest the backlog has ever been and comes on top of the almost 79,000 asylum claims awaiting an initial decision.
The Tory leader said: “What Labour are doing is just rubber-stamping all of the applications and saying they’re processing.
“We need to make sure that when people come to our country illegally, they are deported.
“That is our policy. And what we’re seeing right now is an explosion in the use of these hotels because Labour have failed to stop the boats.
“The reason why they’ve failed to stop the boats is because they have scrapped the only deterrent that this country had, which was the Rwanda plan.”
French interior minister Bruno Retailleau said: “The agreement between France and the United Kingdom to prevent the tragedy of Channel and North Sea crossings will take effect tomorrow.
“It establishes an experimental mechanism with a clear objective: to dismantle the smuggling networks.
“It marks a first step in addressing a challenge that calls for the mobilization of the entire European Union, building on the EU-UK summit of May 19.”