UK considers electronically tagging migrants due to lack of detention spaces

With only 2,500 detention spaces available, GPS tags are among the options being looked at by Home Secretary Suella Braverman

A group of people thought to be migrants are brought into Dover on board a Border Force vessel. PA

The UK is considering electronically tagging migrants to stop them from absconding amid fears there is a lack of space to accommodate new arrivals.

Under the new Illegal Migration Act, anyone who arrives in the UK by irregular means, such as on a small boat, is automatically detained and unable to claim asylum.

Fears have been raised the new measures will “incentivise” migrants to abscond and enter the informal economy. There are only 2,500 spaces in detention centres.

The Home Office is trying to increase those numbers by converting former military sites such as camps and barges, although these plans have led to protests and legal challenges.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said “all options” were on the table when asked about a report in The Times about the potential use of GPS tags.

“We've just enacted a landmark piece of legislation in the form of our Illegal Migration Act – that empowers us to detain those who arrive here illegally and thereafter swiftly remove them to a safe country like Rwanda,” she told Sky News.

“That will require a power to detain and ultimately control those people – we need to exercise a level of control if we are to remove them from the United Kingdom.

“We are considering a range of options. We have a couple of thousand detention places in our existing removal capacity.

“We will be working intensively to increase that, but it's clear we are exploring a range of options – all options – to ensure that we have that level of control of people so they can flow through our system swiftly to enable us to remove them.”

Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “This is treating people as mere objects rather than vulnerable men, women and children in search of safety who should always be treated with compassion and humanity in the same way we welcomed Ukrainian refugees.

“This is not who we are as a country nor the Britain we aspire to be.”

Currently, a record 175,000 people are waiting in the UK for a decision on an asylum claim, up 44 per cent since June 2022. So far this year, around 19,400 have crossed the Channel on small boats.

That could leave the UK with a “permanent backlog” of migrants, which could cost the UK £6.4 billion ($8.14 billion) a year in accommodation costs.

A deal is in place with Rwanda to take migrants and, alongside other measures, the government hopes this will deter enough asylum seekers to reduce the £6 million a day spent on hotel accommodation for them, one of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s five key pledges.

The policy faces a legal battle after it was ruled to be unlawful. So far, the government has yet to reach agreements with other countries to take asylum seekers who arrive in the UK in small boats.

The Refugee Council estimates that the Illegal Immigration Act could leave 190,000 migrants in legal limbo.

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford argues that if there is no deterrent effect and migrants cannot be removed, the “cost of detaining them would accrue each year for an indefinite period”.