After Sir Keir Starmer campaigned for them to stay, foreign criminals including violent thugs, drug dealers, and a stalker committed additional crimes in the UK.
In 2020, the leader of the Labour Party signed a letter requesting that 50 dangerous offenders not be deported on a flight to Jamaica.
Former Crown Prosecution Service director demanded that “all future charter flights be suspended,” and suggested that convicts be given taxpayer-funded mobile phones to help them stay in the country.
Seven of the criminals went on to commit more violent or drug-related crimes after the intervention. It comes after Starmer appeared to take a “tough” stance on crime in a major anti-social behaviour speech yesterday.
The Labour MP has also refused to support the Government’s policy of deporting illegal immigrants to Rwanda.
The letter signed by Starmer, according to a spokesman for the Party, made no difference because “the Tories have left the department responsible for our national security unable to deal with violent and serious criminals.”
“The failure of the government to sort out their own legal systems or put someone on another flight is responsible for these crimes, not some letter,” they said.
Among those who reoffended after the 2022 campaign was heroin dealer Akiva Heaven, who had already served four years in prison before being released in 2018. Heaven was imprisoned once more in May 2021 for dealing cocaine and heroin in Southsea, Hants.
Starmer also advocated for criminal Barrington Laing’s deportation, despite his involvement in an Asbo gang when he was 14 years old.
When Laing was banned from Croydon city centre for terrifying families, the Leader of the Opposition was the director of public prosecutions. Laing was imprisoned for four years and four months before Starmer helped him avoid deportation.
When he was selling drugs into Kent, the convict led police on a high-speed car chase through Margate. He hit a car and attempted to hide £780 under a hospital bed during the incident.
He was sentenced to six months in prison again in November of last year for carrying a knife.