By KUNA,
London : Since January this year over 2,400 foreign lawbreakers have been removed from Britain, putting the UK Border Agency (UKBA) on track to improve on its record-breaking level of removals in 2007, it was announced here Tuesday.
The Agency was set the tough target of removing 5,000 foreign criminals in 2008, and the British Government today said it is confident the challenge will be met.
The removal of over 2,400 foreign prisoners is an increase of 22 percent compared to the same time last year. It is also the highest number of removals for the first six months of any year.
This builds on the 4,200 foreign prisoners sent home by the Agency in 2007.
The British Government is committed to focusing on the removal of the most harmful people first.
In the first half of the year the UKBA has removed 15 killers, 137 sex offenders and 844 drug offenders.
To ensure this high level of removals continues, last month the Agency committed to new crime partnerships with police across the UK.
Already 85 percent of these partnerships are in place, with immigration officers and the police teaming up to target gang leaders and the facilitators of illegal immigration.
Britains Border and Immigration Minister Liam Byrne committed to a mid-year update on the number of foreign criminals removed from the UK in his delivery plan milestones for 2008 announced in January.
The Minister said ‘I have said repeatedly that there is no hiding place for those that come to Britain and break our rules, which is why already this year we’ve rid the country of over 2,400 foreign lawbreakers.” “In January I set the UK Border Agency the tough target of removing 5,000 foreign criminals by the end of the year, an increase on last year’s record-breaking levels. I am pleased that we are on track to meet this target.” The removal of foreign criminals is just one of the immigration milestones that the British Home Office has already met this year.
Other successes include the launch of the UK Border Agency by day 100 of 2008.
The agency, a new single border force which combined the Border and Immigration Agency and UKVisas and Customs at the border, sees 25,000 staff working across 135 countries.
Already the agency has barred almost 6,000 illegal migrants from entering Britain at juxtaposed controls since the beginning of 2008; seized 83 million pounds worth of illegal drugs, including almost 200 separate seizures of cocaine and heroin, and seized more than 200 million cigarettes worth more than 6.5 million pounds since the Agency was launched last April, the Home Office said.