Eye-watering cost of deporting failed asylum seekers and foreign crooks home revealed
DEPORTATION flights for failed asylum-seekers and foreign offenders cost at least £8,000 per individual last year, figures reveal.
The 54 charter flights to take 1,356 people back to their homelands landed taxpayers with an £11million bill.
The figures, from a Freedom of Information request, cover January to October.
In all, £30million has been sent on removing 3,489 people on 165 flights between early 2020 and late last year.
Alp Mehmet, of Migration Watch UK, said: “This is a jaw-dropping amount of taxpayers’ money for such little return.”
Most returnees were offenders, with the rest failed asylum-seekers or migrants who did not apply to stay but were liable for removal.
Whitehall sources say last-ditch, usually baseless, legal challenges are often submitted leading to a removal being rescheduled.
Meanwhile, critics point out 11,769 foreign inmates were freed but not deported, while 45,000 migrants arrived on small boats last year.
The Home Office said: “Costs for individual flights will vary.
“All spending is carefully scrutinised.”