Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill: briefing on the expansion of criminal offences relating to irregular arrival to the UK

Border Criminologies and Humans for Rights Network have issued a briefing on the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill recently introduced by the Labour government in the UK. Written by NGOs and researchers who have been working on the issue of people criminalised for their irregular arrival to the UK since 2022, this briefing focuses on the new Bill’s criminalisation provisions, their implications for people on the move, and key areas of concern.

You can read the briefing here. 

Briefing's Top Lines:

• The Border Security Bill includes a range of new criminal offences which the government argue will a) target people smugglers, and b) deter irregular arrival.
   
• These new offences are an extension of offences expanded in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (NABA 2022), which created a new offence of ‘illegal arrival’ to enable the prosecution of people who make asylum claims upon arrival. This offence also expanded the scope of the offence of ‘facilitating a breach of immigration law’, which through the NABA now has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
   
• Since coming into force on 28th June 2022, these NABA offences have been used routinely against people on the move themselves, including people seeking asylum, victims of trafficking and torture, and age disputed children. While rhetorically justified as ‘targeting smugglers’, in reality, it is those seeking safety who are imprisoned.
   
• The best available data suggests 556 people were charged with ‘illegal arrival’ having arrived on ‘small boats’, and 455 convicted, from June 2022 until the end of 2024. Mostly, these people are part of one or both of two groups: those identified as having an ‘immigration history’ in the UK, or those accused of steering the dinghy. Many of those arrested come from high asylum grant rate nationalities, including from Sudan, South Sudan, and Afghanistan.
   
• Included in this figure are at least 26 children with ongoing age disputes, arrested as adults for how they arrived to the UK after a cursory age enquiry in Dover1. At least 6 of these individuals were arrested and charged since Labour came into power in July 2024. At least 16 of these children have spent time in adult prisons, sharing cells with adults.
   
• Those accused of steering dinghies are rarely successfully prosecuted with ‘facilitation’ as there is usually no further evidence of their involvement in the organisation of crossings. They are instead imprisoned for ‘illegal arrival’. This group are among the most vulnerable in Northern France, and are often coerced or compelled to steer due to not being able to afford the crossing otherwise.
   
• The new offences proposed in the Border Security Bill provide the government with more tools to arrest and imprison people on the move themselves, in an expansion of the current practice. Just as people have continued to cross since the introduction of the NABA offences, there is no evidence that these offences will deter people from seeking safety in the UK.
   
• Penalising people for the necessary actions they take to enter a country to seek asylum is contrary to the Refugee Convention, and the Palermo Protocol on Smuggling.