Migrants who risk their lives to arrive in the UK on small boats are "criminals," British Home Secretary Suella Braverman said in a televised interview on Wednesday as the government presses ahead with its crackdown on Channel crossings.
Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, said in a speech on Tuesday that "those crossing tend to have completely different lifestyles and values to those in the UK."
When asked about what Jenrick had meant, Braverman, the daughter of Indian parents who emigrated to the UK from Mauritius and Kenya, said: "People who are coming here illegally are breaking our laws. They are criminals and they don't have a right to be here. That is at odds with our values of upholding the rule of law, generosity and helping."
The home secretary's comments came as the Illegal Migration Bill returned to the parliament where it is expected to clear its final hurdles before heading to the House of Lords for further scrutiny.
The government has tabled a number of changes to the legislation, making it tougher with clauses such as ignoring rulings by the European Court of Human Rights, which blocked a migrant removal flight to Rwanda last June.
In October, Braverman described the arrival of asylum seekers on the UK's southern coast as an "invasion," drawing a fierce backlash.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHCR), an executive non-departmental public body in the UK, issued a list of concerns regarding the bill on Monday. The human rights watchdog claimed the bill risked breaching the UN Refugee Convention by restricting the right to asylum and penalizing refugees.
The EHCR said the bill also went against the European Convention on Human Rights, which the UK is a part of since 1950. It said the bill "risks breaching human rights protections under the ECHR and the principle of non-refoulment," which says refugees should not be sent back to a country where they are at risk of persecution.
The EHCR argued that the bill removes protections for victims of trafficking and modern slavery, risks breaching the refugee convention by restricting the right to asylum and penalizing refugees, and includes broad provisions for the detention of children and pregnant women.
