Rwanda plan: Home Office launches surprise sweep to fill first flights

The Home Office has launched a UK-wide operation to detain asylum seekers for the first deportation flights to Rwanda.

The sweep comes "weeks earlier than expected", said The Guardian, which broke the story. Asylum seekers selected for removal will be detained during regular scheduled appointments with Home Office officials, and immigration enforcement agents "will also pick people up nationwide".

Detainees will be transferred directly to holding centres to await deportation. Last week, Rishi Sunak said that the number of places in detention centres had been increased to 2,200 in preparation for the operation, which had not been anticipated to begin for several weeks.

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The Home Office did not address the report that detentions are underway from today, but confirmed that the government was "entering the final phase" of operationalising the policy.

Tory insiders have "dismissed suggestions" the Home Office's operation had been brought forward to give the Conservatives a boost ahead of local elections on Thursday, said the Financial Times. The party is braced for "potentially devastating losses" in council and mayoral races across England.

Labour MP Kim Johnson accused Sunak of "political point-scoring" at the expense of "desperate people who have been languishing in a state of uncertainty for far too long", while Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson, Alistair Carmichael, called it a "cruel political gimmick".

Sunak claimed an increase in migrants heading to Ireland demonstrated that his party's Rwanda plan was already having a deterrent effect. During an interview with Sky News in which he mentioned Rwanda and illegal migration 13 times, the prime minister reiterated his "determination to get that Rwanda scheme going", adding that he was focused on "stopping the boats".

The immigration debate has "become so warped" that "mass deportation is viewed, in Sunak's words, as 'compassionate'", said Kenan Malik in The Observer. But there is "nothing compassionate or constructive about the performative cruelty that now stands for immigration policy".