Briefings on the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2025
While we welcome the parts of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill that repeal the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 and parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 (IMA), the Bill does not go far enough to undo the harmful legislation that has been introduced in recent years, including provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. We are alarmed by the introduction of yet further criminal offences that could easily be applied to refugees as opposed to smugglers and traffickers.
The parts of the IMA that the Bill does not address, including expanded detention powers, reduced protections available for survivors of modern slavery, and the treatment of asylum and human rights claims from countries including Albania, Georgia and India as automatically inadmissible, risk undermining the government’s commitment to the protection of human rights and to the rule of law.
People seeking asylum can already be subject to prosecution for illegal entry and facilitating illegal entry and we have seen this result in the repeated criminalisation of children who have wrongly been deemed to be adults by the Home Office and moved to adult prisons. With this Bill, we are concerned that many more people crossing the channel, including potential survivors of trafficking and torture, will be blocked from protection and be subjected en masse to expanded powers of investigations and prosecution.
Further criminalisation and measures blocking people from protection will do nothing to address the causes of forced displacement and unauthorised movement through Europe to the UK. It will instead intensify the vulnerability of those who will continue to rely on the services of smugglers in the absence of legal routes to protection, and leave survivors of trafficking and exploitation without support.