Australian National Review – Government awards £15m contract for illegal immigrant reintegration program

Returnees are supported in reintegrating into their home country. The reintegration results of the individuals are monitored and evaluated.

The government has published a contract notice worth £15 million for a return programme for illegal immigrants sent home.

Successful bidders will support the Home Office in its key priorities of tackling illegal immigration and deportations by providing ‘reintegration support’ to those sent back home, including coordinating temporary accommodation and helping them find work.

The destinations mentioned are Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

According to the Home Office, the scheme is suitable for people working in the voluntary and community sectors. Tenders are being sought from charities and not-for-profit organisations in the UK and internationally.

The contract commences on 1 April 2025 and will run for three financial years, with a budget of £5,000,000 for each year.

The announcement was made days after Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said her office would step up deportations of failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants after announcing the new Border Security Command was “gearing up” to tackle illegal immigration.

Reintegration support

Some of the tasks that successful bidders will be required to undertake include coordinating ‘cash assistance’ to meet the immediate needs of returning refugees, as well as providing care and food packages, arranging accommodation for up to five nights on arrival, and in-country transportation to an onward destination.

In addition, contractors assist returnees with their long-term reintegration into their home country, including support with official documentation and family reunification services.

Returnees also receive assistance in finding a job, access to training or further education, and even support in setting up a business.

The Ministry of Interior also says that service providers will be involved in the “monitoring and evaluation of the reintegration results of the returning person.”

On Thursday, figures from the UK Home Office showed that more than 20,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the UK this year after crossing the Channel.

On Wednesday, 614 people made the crossing in 10 boats, bringing the provisional total for 2024 to 20,433. That is 3 percent more than the same period in 2023, when 19,801 arrived, but 18 percent less than in 2022, when the number was 25,065.

A Home Office spokesman said: “We all want to see an end to dangerous small boat crossings, which undermine border security and put lives at risk.

“The new Government is taking steps to improve our border security by establishing a new Border Security Command that will bring together our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, equipped with new counter-terrorism powers and hundreds of staff based in the UK and abroad to help defeat criminal smuggling gangs that are making millions in profits.”

Increasing detentions and deportations

On August 21, the Home Office announced new measures to improve border security, promising a “major increase in immigration enforcement and return activities,” including expanding detention capacity at immigrant removal centers and increasing the number of return flights.

The government said it had already conducted nine successful return flights in the previous six weeks and was redeploying staff and resources to support further repatriation activities, with the aim of increasing the number of deportations to the highest level since 2018.

Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, expressed doubts last week whether this would be a major achievement.

Walsh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “If we look at forced evictions, there were 6,000 last year and 9,000 in 2018. So this would require 3,000 more, a 50 per cent increase, which seems achievable.

“The other point I want to emphasize is that the bar for 2018 is not exactly high, apart from the pandemic which saw the lowest number of forced evictions in 20 years.”

Rwanda regulation

Before the election, Sir Keir Starmer promised to set up a Border Security Command and after his victory in the July 4 election he scrapped the Conservatives’ Rwanda plan, which would have seen asylum seekers entering the country illegally, including those arriving by boat across the Channel, sent to the African country.

During the previous parliament, legal challenges to the measures caused delays in the plans’ implementation, resulting in no flights to Rwanda carrying illegal immigrants, except for four who went voluntarily. Cooper estimated the plan cost £700 million.

James Cleverly, shadow home secretary and Conservative leadership candidate, has criticised the new Labour government for saying it would get illegal immigration under control while boats full of asylum seekers are still arriving on British shores.

Cleverly posted the following on social media platform X on Wednesday: “At the election, Labour promised to destroy the gangs that smuggle people.

“Two months into the government and almost 6,000 arrivals later, they have proven that they never took tackling illegal migration seriously.”

The former Home Secretary previously criticised Labour for scrapping the Rwanda plan, saying it would have a deterrent effect on people smuggling and illegal immigration.

PA Media contributed to this report.