Terror attacks will be the result of going soft on illegal migrants

Robert Jenrick
Robert Jenrick

In the United Kingdom we are sadly all too familiar with terrorism. The lives it takes. The suffering it inflicts on those left behind; friends, families and survivors. And the fear it sows in our communities.

It’s shaped our recent past, and still hangs over us today.

That’s why I was so mystified to hear our Foreign Secretary claim this week that climate change poses a bigger threat to the security of our people than terrorism.

For 40 years the Provisional IRA waged a brutal campaign across our country against British soldiers, police and civilians alike, killing more than 1,700 people.

Then, since 2001, with the al-Qaeda attack on the World Trade Center, our people have faced, to varying degrees, the threat from Islamist terrorism.

Other forms of terrorism also pose a risk, but no other has inspired a mass casualty attack in the UK. In fact, the caseload of terrorist threats monitored by the domestic security service MI5 is 75 per cent Islamist. Many Islamist attacks have been carried out by homegrown terrorists. People born and raised in Britain. From the al-Qaeda-inspired attacks of 7/7, to the more recent horrors of Manchester Arena, London Bridge and Westminster Bridge.

This still remains a huge concern for our authorities, with terrorist groups who prospered in the wake of the Arab Spring able to influence and radicalise our own.

Exploiting porous borders

So why would we add to this threat? Why wouldn’t we do everything we can to stop anyone else who could launch a terrorist attack entering our country?

I ask this because, today, we face a new challenge. Terror suspects are exploiting our porous borders to break into our country. And, yet, we are not doing everything we can to protect our people.

It is sometimes suggested that I was a different politician when I left the Home Office than when I entered.

That’s not quite right. My values didn’t change. Before I was at the Home Office, I believed in limited and high-skilled migration, secure borders, and a tough approach on law and order. But my views about what had to be done to advance those values did change. And they changed because of the dark truth I was exposed to. Because I saw the British state powerless as people it knew to be terrorists broke into the country, and then fail to remove them because of our current legal regime.

In the year before I was immigration minister more than a dozen known terror suspects crossed the Channel on small boats. By now that figure is well into the dozens. These are people our security services identified as known quantities, threats to our communities, with links to Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

And they waltzed right in. Almost another 1,000 small-boat arrivals were connected to criminality of all kinds.

They all go on to watchlists, of varying levels. But how can we expect our police officers and security services, already dealing with threats from home, to take on dozens or hundreds more cases? It’s an impossible task. And while they do a fantastic job, it’s inevitable some will slip through the net.

Remove illegal migrants in days

Upon grappling with these cases, it was obvious to me it would be unconscionable to not do absolutely everything we could to stop illegal migrants breaking into our country. Arguments that the views of activist foreign judges and liberal elites were more important than fixing this problem made my blood boil. This is why I was so insistent we had to push for the solution that gave the state the powers it needed to remove illegal migrants within days.

And this is why I’m so angry that Sir Keir Starmer has carelessly scrapped, rather than strengthened, the Rwanda deterrent.

It was a cheap political scoring point, unevidenced, and designed to give succour to his friends on the Left.

I won’t sugarcoat the consequences of this. And I won’t apologise for putting it starkly. It means our country is not just more likely to suffer from out-of-control illegal migration for longer, but that we are more likely to be the victim of extremist or, even, terrorist attacks. The security services know it, the key border force officials know it, and anyone who has seen inside of the system knows it.

I have been painfully honest: we failed to stop the boats. We had a plan to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda within days but, to make it work, it needed strengthening. That’s what I fought for alongside colleagues in government and why I resigned from Cabinet when I wasn’t listened to, because I knew we were failing our people.

We’ve seen many times how illegal arrivals, who con their way into our country, can go on to commit terrible crimes. Ahmed Ali Alid, a 45-year-old from Morocco, arrived on a ferry in 2020, claiming asylum. The British taxpayer supported him, gave him money, food, and accommodation to stay. In October 2023, following the devastating attack by Hamas against Israel, he tried to stab his Christian convert housemate to death while he lay in his bed early one morning. Then Alid walked out of the house in Hartlepool, and found 70-year-old Terence Carney taking a stroll. He stabbed Terence to death, screaming he was doing it for “Gaza”.

Stabbed to death

Similarly, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, an Afghan asylum seeker in his 20s who lied about his age, claiming to be 14, after arriving on a boat into the UK. Almost three years after his arrival, in 2022, he stabbed to death Thomas Roberts in Bournemouth. Thomas was a 21-year-old qualified engineer and budding Royal Marine, his whole life ahead of him.

I’m clear about the solution to this nightmare. And I know, as leader, what I would do. I would break the stranglehold of Blairite human rights legislation and I would leave the European Convention on Human Rights so we could remove illegal migrants like Lawangeen from our country within days. When lives are at stake, we can’t afford to waste decades on futile attempts to reform the treaty.

Sir Keir has no clue. Even his new border chief has told him he needs a working deterrent like the Rwanda scheme.

The Prime Minister is a man who trades on his past career of “jailing terrorists” as a prosecutor. He forgets to mention the ones he defended in court. Now, he has increased the risk from terrorists by removing any deterrent to the small-boat migrants arriving here.

It should be remembered what Sir Keir’s done. Because it is the height of irresponsibility and will endanger lives. We must use everything we’ve got to fight terrorism. It remains one of the biggest threats we face as a country.