British Home Secretary eager to send asylum seekers to Rwanda

British Home Secretary Suella Braverman on Tuesday He said His “dream” is to implement the controversial and critical immigration policy of Boris Johnson’s Conservative government that calls on the UK to force some migrants seeking asylum to leave the country and travel to Rwanda. The agreement signed between the two countries’ governments requires the UK to pay Rwanda to take care of migrants who have entered British territory illegally as long as the decision to grant them refugee status is required. It also provides for the migrants themselves to remain in Rwanda if their asylum application is accepted. Basically, even those who have been granted asylum will not be allowed to return to the UK. Braverman spoke about this policy at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham, England:

“I would like to see the first page of telegraph With a plane taking off to Rwanda, this is my dream, this is my obsession”

I’d like to get the front page of the Telegraph with a flight to Rwanda. This is my dream. This is my home secretary Suella Braverman’s preoccupation pic.twitter.com/BxuEoR1lrU

– Phantom Power (@PhantomPower14) 4 October 2022

Braverman is 42 years old and has held the position of Home Secretary since the beginning of September, when the new government led by Liz Truss took office. In July, she ran to replace Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and thus Prime Minister, but was eliminated in the second round of primaries. As with former Home Secretary Priti Patel, the daughter of Indian immigrants, Braverman’s stance on immigrants and transfers to Rwanda is also controversial due to her personal history: she was born in England to parents who emigrated from Kenya and Mauritius.

However, transfers of migrants to Rwanda have not yet been carried out. The first flight that was supposed to send migrants to Rwanda, scheduled for 14 June, was blocked following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. The court ruled that one of the asylum-seekers to be transferred, a man who fled Iraq, would suffer an irreparable violation of his rights if he were transferred to Rwanda. Since then, no new attempts have been made, also due to some legal proceedings still in progress which the UK High Court of Justice has to say.

New Prime Minister Liz Truss said she will continue Johnson’s policy on immigration and work to implement the transfer of asylum seekers to Rwanda. He also said that Braverman would be able to make sure that “no European judge prevails over us”. In his speech at the Birmingham Conference, Braverman specified, however, that this was unlikely to happen before the end of the year, due to ongoing legal controversies.

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