Border chiefs in the dark over illegal migrants

John Vine, chief inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA), said there is no clear strategy to find out what proportion of this growing number of migrants is still in the UK illegally.

Tracking these absconders down and removing them from the country is not seen as a priority for the agency, and there is no clear plan to ensure the cases do not just become another backlog to deal with, Mr Vine said.

He added: “There are over 150,000 cases nationally of migrants who have been refused an extension of stay in the UK.

“The agency does not know how many of these individuals have left the country or who are waiting to be removed.

“I also saw no evidence that there is a clear plan in place for the agency to deal with this stream of work to ensure this does not become another backlog. I believe it can and must do more to demonstrate it is dealing with this issue in a more proactive manner.”

The extent of the problems emerged in an inspection of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight local immigration team at the end of last year.

Cases involving migrants in the UK, such as students, who had been refused an extension of stay were put in a so-called migration refusal pool and told they must leave within 28 days, the report showed.

Migrants in the pool who were still in the UK included those who should have left but had not done so, those who had applied for leave in another category, who had outstanding appeals or other legal barriers, or who had left the UK voluntarily by a route not captured by e-borders.

Staff underestimated the scale of the problem by about two-thirds, gauging there were between 400 and 600 cases when there were 1,893 in the area on December 12, Mr Vine said.

While the proportion of cases in the local team’s pool remained at about 1.2 per cent of all national cases between October and December, the number nationally increased every week from 153,821 on October 17 to 159,313 on December 12, UKBA figures showed.

An analysis of 44 cases by the inspectors found less than half had left the UK, 20 voluntarily and one as an enforced removal.

Of the remaining 23, the inspectors said the “greatest concern” was that the absconder tracing process was not always followed.

Nine of the absconders had not been added to the police national computer as either “wanted” or with a “locate trace” marker.

Some of the 23 were making further appeals to stay, were serving prison sentences or awaiting travel documents, the report showed.

Immigration Minister Damian Green said: “Under the last government there was no effective strategy in place to ensure migrants left at the end of their time in the UK. The UK Border Agency is now working through a group of potential overstayers to identify those who have not left.

“This includes checking passenger records using our e-borders database which now covers all flights outside Europe. This summer the UKBA launched a UK-wide operation to remove overstayers and we have already seen 1,800 removals since the campaign started.”