Hundreds of convicted criminals are being deported to Britain under Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal migrants and the UK is unprepared for the influx, campaigners have warned. The Telegraph has more.

Prisoner welfare campaigners have warned that UK Government agencies have done little to prepare for convicts and migrants being sent back, with many at risk of ending up homeless or turning to crime.

Figures obtained by the Telegraph have revealed that the number of people flown back to the UK by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials has doubled since Trump took office for the second time last year.

ICE data show that 212 people were deported to the UK from the US between Trump’s inauguration on January 20th and October 15th. That works out at an average of 5.5 a week – double the rate of 2.6 a week for the same period up to the end of Joe Biden’s term as president.

Of those deported to the UK since Trump took office, around half (53%) had no charges or convictions, 24% were convicted criminals, and 23% had criminal charges pending.

The majority had failed to obtain permission to stay or never applied for citizenship, only to be picked up and detained as part of enforcement operations against illegal migrants.

The figures for deportations, collated by Berkeley University’s deportation data project, are understood to include a significant proportion of people who were born in the UK but spent most of their childhood and adult life in the US without obtaining American citizenship.

Trump’s ICE crackdown is part of his pledge to ‘secure the border’, cut crime and make American cities safer, but it could have consequences in those countries to which convicted criminals and illegal migrants are returned.

The charity Prisoners Abroad said it began seeing a spike in deportations from the US last April, with many removed at short notice and given little opportunity to prepare for their arrival in Britain.

It warns that this leaves people even more vulnerable than usual, arriving late at night when many services are closed and into a system that is not expecting them – creating the potential for them to slip into a life of crime and reoffending.

Christopher Stacey, the Chief Executive of Prisoners Abroad, warned that Britain was far from prepared for the influx of deportees from the US.

He said: “What we see time and time again is that often statutory agencies haven’t thought about people coming back from prison overseas. I don’t think we are ready as a society.

“I don’t think we’re set up. I don’t even think we’re thinking about this. As a country we often think about deporting people away from this country, but that is happening in reverse daily.”

Worth reading in full.