Robert Jenrick has claimed that dozens of terror suspects have crossed the Channel on small boats.
The Conservative former immigration minister and leadership contender said that his government had intercepted Islamic State and Al-Qaeda members.
In an article for the Telegraph, the Newark MP said: “In the year before I was immigration minister, more than a dozen known terror suspects crossed the Channel on small boats. By now, that figure is well into the dozens.
“These are people our security services identified as known quantities, threats to our communities, with links to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda. And they waltzed right in.”
In addition to the terror suspects, Mr Jenrick claimed that around 1,000 migrants who arrived in small boats in 2022 and 2023 have been linked to criminality.
“They all go on to watchlists of varying levels,” he wrote. “But how can we expect our police officers and security services, already dealing with threats from home, to take on dozens or hundreds more cases?
“It’s an impossible task. And while they do a fantastic job, it’s inevitable some will slip through the net.”
Mr Jenrick has emerged as a frontrunner among the Tory faithful, with the Telegraph reporting that 61 per cent of members see him as the first choice.
He had been immigration minister under Rishi Sunak but quit over the then prime minister’s revamped policy to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda.
Sir Keir Starmer scrapped the previous government’s plan calling the scheme a gimmick.
He said: “The Rwanda scheme was dead and buried before it started. It’s never been a deterrent.
“Look at the numbers that have come over in the first six-and-a-bit months of this year, they are record numbers – that is the problem that we are inheriting.”
