Ministers have refused to rule out deporting an Afghan pilot who fought alongside British armed forces before escaping his war-torn country and arriving in the UK on a small boat.
The air force lieutenant, who flew 30 combat missions against the Taliban, could be sent to Rwanda after he travelled here illegally. He had been forced into hiding and said it was “impossible” to find a legal route to Britain.
He arrived in a small boat last year, which makes him eligible for deportation under the UK’s existing inadmissibility rules. The rules, introduced in January 2021, state that anyone who arrives having travelled through a safe country such as France should be barred from claiming asylum here and removed from the UK.
However, his case would not fall under the government’s new Illegal Migration Bill, which would allow the Home Office to indefinitely detain migrants who arrive illegally, bar them from claiming asylum and make it easier to deport individuals to third countries such as Rwanda. The powers would only apply to migrants who arrived illegally since March this year.
The pilot is highly likely to be granted asylum, given that 98 per cent of Afghans who have claimed asylum in the UK since 2020 have been successful. However, the government has not ruled out Afghans being eligible for deportation to Rwanda since the controversial policy was announced last year.
Yesterday, Dominic Raab, the justice secretary and deputy prime minister, was unable to guarantee that the pilot would not be deported to Rwanda when asked about the case. Put to him that the pilot was “desperate,” Raab told the BBC there were “safe and legal” ways for Afghans to claim asylum in the UK, despite the danger to the individual’s life if he had asked the Taliban government for permission to leave.
Raab said: “The rules for asylum applicants include vulnerable people from Afghanistan. We want to make sure there are safe and trusted routes.”
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He accepted it was “difficult” to get out of Afghanistan but said there were other routes via neighbouring countries, adding: “We set up flights before the evacuation of Kabul. Others can do it via neighbouring countries. But what is also clear is that we cannot keep going on creating perverse incentives to come here in the most dangerous conditions which have lined the pockets of criminal gangs who feed this trade.”
The Home Office has insisted that Afghans fleeing the Taliban can qualify for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy, which is for those who helped British armed forces during the UK’s 20-year mission in Afghanistan, or through the Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme (ACRS).
However, only a handful of Afghans have been resettled to the UK under ACRS since the initial evacuation of Kabul in August 2021. The vast majority of those granted visas last year under ACRS, roughly 4,600, were transferred on to it from the initial group of Afghans evacuated following the fall of Kabul.
Ministers earlier this week admitted there are 4,300 people eligible for evacuation still trapped in Afghanistan and a further thousand being housed in hotels across the border in Pakistan.
