The government has not ruled out a report suggesting that the Home Office is considering fitting asylum seekers arriving in the UK via unauthorised means with electronic tags.
Speaking to Sky News on Monday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman said: “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 to swiftly remove them to a safe country like Rwanda.”
The Times said officials are considering it as a way to prevent migrants who cannot be housed in limited detention sites from absconding.
She said: “We need to exercise a level of control of people if we’re 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’re exploring a range of options, all options, to ensure that we have that level of control over people so that they can flow through our systems swiftly to enable us to thereafter remove them from the United Kingdom.”
Ms Braverman also rejected any suggestion it was a mistake to pledge to stop small boats crossings, as she hit out at “a range of forces” seeking to block ministers.
“It’s what the British people expect of us,” she told Sky News.
“It’s what I passionately believe is the right thing to do. And we are making progress. We’ve passed our landmark legislation.
“But let’s also be clear about what we’re up against. We’re up against a range of forces which are intent on stopping us – whether it’s immigration lawyers, charities, NGOs, many of whom have very close links with the Labour Party, operating night and day to stop us from delivering this pledge through legal challenges in the courts.”
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