UK: Refugees to be prevented from ever receiving citizenship ― Home Office releases controversial deportation video ― Record number of deaths in asylum accommodation in 2024 ― Confirmation of blanket rejection of asylum claims from Afghan special force…

• The Home Office (Ministry of the Interior) has introduced a new measure which will make it almost impossible for people who arrive in the UK irregularly to ever receive British citizenship.
• The Home Office has released a video showing people being deported from the UK.
• A record number of people died in state-run asylum accommodation in 2024.
• The Ministry of Defence has confirmed that the UK Special Forces command rejected every one of more than 2,000 asylum claims that were submitted by members of the Afghan special forces who fought with UK forces against the Taliban.

The government has introduced a new measure which will make it almost impossible for people who arrive in the UK irregularly to ever receive British citizenship. On 10 February, the Home Office (Ministry of the Interior) updated the guidance that case workers use to assess if an applicant is of “good character” to include the following provision: “Any person applying for citizenship from 10 February 2025, who previously entered the UK illegally will normally be refused, regardless of the time that has passed since the illegal entry took place”. The updated guidance also provides that: “A person who applies for citizenship from 10 February 2025 who  has previously arrived without a required valid entry clearance or electronic travel authorisation, having made a dangerous journey will normally be refused citizenship”. It also defines dangerous journeys as including those made “by small boat or concealed in a vehicle or any other conveyance”.

The updated guidance has been widely criticised by politicians, lawyers and NGOs. Labour MP Stella Creasy has called on the government to reverse the guidance. “This should be changed ASAP,” she wrote on Bluesky, adding: “If we give someone refugee status, it can’t be right to then refuse them a route to become a British citizen”. Former Home Secretary (Minister of the Interior) David Blunkett, who is now a Labour member of the House of Lords (upper chamber of parliament), asked the government to reflect on the “societal and cohesion aspects” of the revised policy and the “impact on children and their right to UK citizenship and the statelessness which would arise for individuals if their birth country refused to renew or retain their nationality”. Describing the change as “a clear breach of the Refugee Convention”, lawyer Colin Yeo added that it would have “zero deterrent effect”. “It’s totally pointless in real-world policy terms,” he wrote on Bluesky. The head of ECRE member organisation the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, was equally scathing, saying that the change “flies in the face of reason”. “The British public want refugees who have been given safety in our country to integrate into and contribute to their new communities, so it makes no sense for the government to erect more barriers,” he added. On 16 February, he was one of 148 representatives of NGOs, trade unions and religious institutions who co-signed a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in which they called for the government to abandon the change. “We urge you to reverse this change and instead work with us and others up and down the country to celebrate the country’s heritage of welcoming refugees and focus on the importance of a shared community that delivers for all,” they wrote.

On the same day as the publication of the updated citizenship guidance and the first vote on the draft ‘Border Security, Asylum and Migration’ law in the House of Commons (lower chamber of parliament), the Home Office published a video of people being deported from the UK. The footage shows a number of men being escorted by Border Force staff off a bus and up the steps of a charter jet. It was accompanied by a press release in which the Home Office stated that almost 19,000 “failed asylum seekers, foreign criminals and other immigration offenders” had been deported since the election in July 2024. The Home Office described the release of the video as an effort to “to provide further understanding of this important work”. Labour MP Clive Lewis accused the government of “enabling the mainstreaming of racism” by releasing the video. “Just using harsh and cruel language, or bringing in longer sentences, or filming people being put onto planes, will not solve the problem,” he said, adding: “Seeking asylum is not a criminal act and filming people who have been refused permission to stay in the UK is cruel”. Describing the video as “Trump-style TV footage” which had a “whiff of panic about it”, Enver Solomon urged the government to reconsider its approach. “Forcing those whose asylum applications have been rejected or who have overstayed their visas onto planes has never been the most effective way to return people and never will be,” he wrote in an op-ed published in the Guardian newspaper. “Voluntary returns are far more effective and the government should know this because it was the last Labour administration that commissioned independent agencies to run a voluntary programme that saw numbers increase,” he added.

A record number of people died in Home Office-run asylum accommodation in 2024. According to data released by the Home Office following freedom of information requests, 51 people seeking asylum died in its care in 2024, an increase of 11 from the previous year. The Home Office initially claimed that there had only been 30 deaths of which nine were attributed to suspected suicide. In addition, no date of death was listed for 11 people, suggesting that the Home Office did not know when they had died. Commenting on the data, the director of the NGO Inquest, Deborah Coles, said: “There is a shocking lack of scrutiny and accountability from the Home Office and a complete disregard for the lives of this vulnerable group”. The NGO Refugee Action urged the government to introduce measures to reduce the number of deaths in future. “The Home Office must improve safeguarding, systems and staff training – change would save lives,” it wrote on Bluesky.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed that the UK Special Forces (UKSF) command rejected every one of more than 2,000 asylum claims that were submitted by members of the Afghan special forces who had fought with UK forces against the Taliban. The confirmation came in early February during court hearings on a legal challenge brought by one of the Afghan special forces soldiers now in the UK on behalf of other soldiers still in Afghanistan. The MoD had previously denied that there had been a  general policy to reject all resettlement applications from the soldiers. The UKSF command’s rejection of all of the applications was particularly controversial because it took place at a time when a public inquiry was investigating allegations that its forces had committed war crimes on operations in Afghanistan in which Afghan special forces had been present. Given that only Afghan special forces who had been resettled in the UK could be compelled to co-operate with the inquiry, the UKSF’s actions have led to speculation that the soldiers’ asylum applications were vetoed in order to prevent them from presenting “potentially significant evidence”. “There is the appearance that UK Special Forces blocked the Afghan special forces’ applications because they were witnesses to the alleged UK war crimes currently being investigated in the Afghan inquiry,” said Mike Martin MP. According to the BBC, some of the asylum rejections have already been overturned and some members of the Afghan special forces have been able to travel to the UK. However, “many are in hiding in Afghanistan” and “dozens have reportedly been beaten, tortured or killed by the Taliban”.

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