Boris Johnson ’s “shamefully cruel” plan to offload desperate people to Rwanda will cost Brits a fortune and won’t work, experts blasted tonight.
Migrants who arrived “illegally” on dinghies or fridge trucks since January 1 will be detained then forced onto charter flights, like those used to deport foreign criminals.
They will be “removed” with a one-way ticket almost 5,000 miles away to Rwanda.
Once there they will be barred from claiming asylum in Britain, instead having to ask the east African nation for sanctuary.
That is despite two-thirds of those who arrive under the current system being deemed genuine refugees.
The Prime Minister claimed the £120m initial deal with Rwanda would stop vile people traffickers “turning the Channel into a watery graveyard”.
But he admitted his plan could be held up by court fights, was “not sufficient” on its own, and was “unlikely” to cut the number of Channel crossings to zero.
A former Home Office Permanent Secretary said tonight: “It’s inhumane, it’s morally reprehensible, it’s probably unlawful and it may well be unworkable.”
Sir David Normington - the department’s top civil servant until 2011 - told BBC Newsnight there were so many “hurdles” the plan was likely to fail.
More than 100 British refugee support groups tonight said the “shamefully cruel” plans were so “ill-thought-out” they would “result in more, not fewer, dangerous journeys”.
The groups, including the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, argued almost all 4,000 people brought to Rwanda from Israel under a previous deal left again rapidly - leading some into the arms of people traffickers.
The Mirror understands senior Home Office officials have grave doubts about whether the plan will deter enough people to be worth the huge cost.
Even the scheme’s backers in the Home Office only believe “thousands” of migrants will be removed to Rwanda in the first few years.
That is dwarfed by more than 5,000 arriving on small boats since January alone.
Critics also dismissed the £120m price tag as it doesn’t include many costs of the scheme - and Australia’s ‘offshoring’ programme cost billions.
Labour blasted Boris Johnson from trying to distract from his own Partygate lawbreaking in a political stunt ahead of May’s local elections. The party urged Tory chiefs to spend cash cutting a 100,000-person asylum backlog instead.
Council of Europe Human Rights Commissioner Dunja Mijatović said Britain should set up “safe and legal” routes for people to come to the UK, and Oxfam branded the plan “not only cruel and immoral but also impractical”.
Elspeth Guild, Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London, said the Rwanda plan would be “practically impossible and legally problematic”, while Law Society President Stephanie Boyce warned there are “serious questions” whether it complies with international law.
Emily Fielder of the Adam Smith Institute added: “The inhumanity of this policy aside, it will neither deter migrants from crossing the channel, nor will it cost the Government less.
“Rather than throwing out ineffective red-meat policies which will cost the British taxpayer millions of pounds, the Home Office should work more constructively with European partners, and focus on evidence-based solutions.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer branded the plans “unworkable” and “extortionate”.
And senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood said the PM was staging a “massive distraction’ from his own Partygate law-breaking.
Boris Johnson unveiled the plans in a speech at Kent’s Lydd Airport, near the beaches where lifeboats brought women and children ashore this week, while Home Secretary Priti Patel signed a five-year deal in Rwanda’s capital Kigali.
Watched in an aircraft hangar by Army and Navy personnel, the PM vowed to stop the “rank unfairness” of undocumented migrants “paying smugglers to queue-jump, and taking up our capacity to help genuine women and child refugees.”
The PM - who once promised an amnesty for illegal immigrants - claimed uncontrolled immigration forces “unmanageable demands on our NHS and on our welfare state”.
He said the partnership will be “fully compliant with our international legal obligations”, while insisting Rwanda is “one of the safest countries in the world”.
“But nevertheless, we expect this will be challenged in the courts,” he added.
Mr Johnson also announced the Navy was taking over Border Force’s responsibility for tackling Channel crossings from today, with £50m of funds, helicopters, ships and drones, and up to 300 personnel working on a busy day.
Meanwhile a Greek-style holding centre for people currently in £4.7m-a-day hotels will open “shortly” at a closed RAF base in Linton-on-Ouse, N Yorks.
Rwanda removal flights will apply to those the Home Office deems “inadmissible” to claim UK asylum because they passed through a safe country on the way here.
The PM hinted it would focus on men under 40, who were “seven out of ten of those arriving in small boats last year” - but women could be sent to Rwanda too.
The Home Office claimed the move was legal, due to new post-Brexit rules that make it easier to deem people “inadmissible” to claim asylum, if they passed through a “safe third country” on the way to Britain. This means their bid to get UK refugee status is cut off at the first hurdle.
Crucially, the new rules say these people can also be removed to “any” other safe country “that may agree to receive them” - meaning the plan will go ahead even if Priti Patel’s contested Borders Bill is defeated in the Lords.
But the SNP branded the Rwanda plan “evil”, “toxic” and “inhumane” while Freedom from Torture chief executive Sonya Sceats said it was “deeply disturbing and should horrify anybody with a conscience.”
The Tory Reform Group branded it “wrong and irresponsible”, adding: “This hastily thought through plan will cost taxpayers millions at a time when the UK cannot afford it.”
No10 boasted Rwanda is “recognised globally for its record on welcoming migrants” - after the 1994 genocide killed 800,000 people.
But charities raised human rights fears over the nation’s President Paul Kagame, who has ruled for more than two decades and won 99% of the vote in 2017.
Human Rights Watch warns Rwandan refugees who criticise the government “have been threatened and harassed”, while those in exile have been “forcibly disappeared and returned to Rwanda, or killed”.
An expert raised fears whole families could try to cross the Channel to thwart Boris Johnson’s bid to target single men under 40.
Charlie Yaxley, a former Mediterranean crisis spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told the Mirror: “Whenever you close one door, refugees will open a window somewhere else.
“After the war in Libya you still had families putting their babies and whole family on board boats in the Mediterranean. Whether that would now happen in Calais - it’s possible.”
