Our asylum system has been turned against us
Our asylum system has been turned against the British people. A wave of outrage and anger has swept across the nation at the appalling Clapham chemical attack.
But it is a damning indictment of where we are as a country that few can say they were shocked.
We’ve seen this sorry story before. It was not so long ago, in November 2021, when an illegal migrant, granted asylum after fraudulently claiming to have converted to Christianity , blew himself up outside a maternity hospital.
Information is still emerging, but this case already raises serious questions for everyone in positions of authority. Why was Abdul Shokoor Ezedi, the lead suspect , not prevented from entering illegally in the first place back in 2016?
Why was he not instantly removed after he committed sexual assault , as per Home Office guidance? And why did an immigration judge ultimately grant him asylum on a wafer-thin claim and despite the Home Office’s repeated protestations?
At each stage, the asylum system privileged the rights of an illegal immigrant, who committed serious crimes, over the fundamental right of the British public to feel safe and secure in their communities.
As we have come to expect in the aftermath of an attack like this, few of these important questions have been confronted. Those on the Left have preferred to bury their heads in the sand.
The shadow home secretary didn’t consider the attack important enough to comment. Nor did Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader – a man who has spent his careers inside and outside politics frustrating removals of serious criminals just like Ezedi.
Most on the Left cowardly tiptoed around the elephant in the room: his immigration status. The persistent disdain this man showed towards women and girls is in fact a story of the global patriarchy, they argued.
But it is simply common sense to point out that someone is statistically far more likely to hold extreme misogynistic views if they are from countries like Afghanistan, where women are second class citizens, than the UK, where we have made greater strides than nearly any other country at achieving gender equality.
Others attempted to play off the attack as unremarkable, situating it as part of a concerning increase in chemical attacks. They argue most migrants seeking asylum are law-abiding. This is only true if you completely ignore the serious criminal offence of illegal entry they have all committed by breaking into this country from the safety of France.
Once here, a significant minority do go on to commit serious criminality (as the National Crime Agency attested to with the surge of violent drug crime in 2022 partly driven by illegal arrivals from Albania). Anyone unlucky enough to have an asylum hotel near them is likely to have experienced the disruptive low-level criminality that accompanies them.
Probe these important questions and the deep rot that has eaten away at our border security becomes clear. That Ezedi managed to enter the UK on the back of a lorry from Afghanistan is a reflection of the complete failure of the EU to enforce their borders and the flaws in UK-France cooperation.
The improvements we made together at the port of Calais – namely large physical infrastructure and significantly increased fines for negligent drivers, which has dramatically cut illegal entries from lorries – hasn’t been replicated to the same extent in the small boats crisis. But that is not from a lack of trying on the part of the UK.
Having swaggered past the French authorities, Ezedi then took full advantage of our dangerously lax asylum system. He eventually gained asylum after abusing the generosity of a naive, albeit well-meaning vicar, to claim he would be persecuted if removed.
Clergy should never turn those at their door away. But equally they should not be drawn into opining on the veracity of asylum claims, for whilst they may practise the word of God they do not possess his all-knowing wisdom.
The blame here appears to lie at the door of the tribunal judge whose job it is to assess the overall evidence. It is frankly embarrassing that it only took The Telegraph’s reporters just a couple of hours to debunk Ezedi’s claim by speaking to his friends in the community who attested that he remains a “good Muslim”.
Immigration judges should be applying forensic scrutiny to asylum claims relying on a damascene religious conversion, given that this widespread tactic is straight from the people smugglers’ playbook. Until they shed their naivety and cautiousness, our grant rate will remain offensively high.
Since Ezedi’s farcical asylum grant, we’ve reformed the system. I took legislation through Parliament, which established that if you come here illegally from a safe country you now can’t claim asylum at all. But his case underscores what lengths, and lies, people will go to prevent their enforced removal.
I resigned in protest against the Rwanda Bill and sought to amend it to prevent each illegal migrant like Ezedi from having the chance to concoct a reason for why they can’t be removed to Rwanda.
The Government refused to accept my amendments , more concerned at the reaction of the liberal establishment here or those on the gilded international law circuit than the views of the majority of the British public. But before the Rwanda Bill has even passed into law this terrible incident has already proven the argument I and colleagues have consistently been making.
The lesson is to legislate for human nature, not a well-meaning but naive assumption of good faith. Strong border control is not cruel – as we keep seeing time after time, it’s a prerequisite of a safe society.
This case can be a watershed moment. Either you want this tragic farce to end, and are willing to pursue the tough measure necessary, or you don’t. I know what side I’m on.