More foreign criminals than ever before have been kicked out of the country by the United Kingdom Border Agency in the past 12 months.

05 January 2009

More foreign criminals than ever before have been kicked out of the country by the United Kingdom Border Agency in the past 12 months.

The UK Border Agency's figures, announced today show it met the tough target set by the government for 2008, exceeding last year's total of 4,200 foreign criminals removed.

Those removed by the Agency include 50 killers and attempted killers, over 200 sex offenders and more than 1,500 drug offenders. This underlines the government's continued commitment to remove the most harmful people first.

New partnerships

The UK Border Agency now has immigration teams working alongside the Prison Service in prisons to ensure that those that come here and break the rules are removed as quickly as possible. Approximately one in five foreign prisoners are removed directly from prison 180 days before their release date.

In order to maintain its high level of removals, the UK Border Agency committed earlier this year to put in place new crime partnerships with police across the United Kingdom. Eighty five per cent of these partnerships are already in place, with immigration officers and the police teaming up to target the 'Mr Bigs' and the facilitators of illegal immigration.

Statement from the Border and Immigration Minister

Phil Woolas said, 'Britain will not tolerate those that come here and break our rules, which is why we set the UK Border Agency the tough target of removing 5,000 foreign lawbreakers this year.

'By exceeding this target we're showing once again that there's no place in Britain for those that continue to abuse our trust.

'We now consider for deportation all non-EEA foreign nationals who go to prison for serious drug and gun offences no matter how long their sentence.'

Among the 5,000 foreign prisoners removed this year were:

• a Portuguese man convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for possession with intent to supply cocaine, heroin and cannabis
• a Pakistani man convicted of sexual assault on underage girls and sentenced to three, nine month sentences to run concurrently
• a Kosovan man convicted of trafficking for sexual exploitation and sentenced to three and half years in prison
• an Indian man sentenced to five years for the attempted kidnap and sexual assault of an underage girl
• a Malawian man given a four year sentence for rape.
  • detected over 3,000 forged documents
  • searched over 747,100 lorries
  • barred more than 18,600 individuals from attempting to cross the channel illegally
  • seized in excess of 670 million cigarettes - representing a potential loss of ?126.5 million in tax revenue
  • seized ?228.6 million worth of illegal drugs
  • seized over 4,500 dangerous weapons, including firearms, stun guns and hundreds of knives.