by Andy Jones, spiked
To the surprise of no one, it has been revealed that the UK is unable to deport 50 per cent of illegal migrants due to human-rights claims. A government document leaked to The Times found that, of the 400,000 illegal immigrants identified by the Home Office as living in the UK, more than half could not be deported as they awaited the outcomes of various tribunal decisions.
But it is not just failed refugees we cannot deport. The UK is also unable to deport criminal monsters, even if they have been found guilty of the most heinous crimes.
Last week, we discovered that Shabir Ahmed, the infamous ringleader of a Rochdale rape gang, cannot be deported to Pakistan. Ahmed was convicted in 2012 of 30 child-rape offences, with some of his victims as young as 12. The girls he raped were ‘plied’ with alcohol and drugs, gang-raped in rooms above take-away shops, and sent to other men in taxis to be abused.
Ahmed – who, in a bleak twist of irony, was a ‘welfare officer’ for Oldham Council at the time of his offences – was released on Thursday after serving 14 years of a 19-year sentence. Incredibly, he is protected from deportation by a provision in the 1971 Immigration Act, which exempts Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK before 1973 from removal. This sadistic paedophile was stripped of his British citizenship at the time of his conviction, but will nonetheless be free to roam the streets here for as long as he pleases.
Read also: Now a convicted people smuggler is claiming asylum in the UK by Michael Murphy