Shabana Mahmood has pledged to ramp up the detention of illegal migrants as the number of foreign criminals avoiding deportation has hit a record of almost 20,000.

Home Office figures show there are currently 19,779 offenders living freely in Britain, more than double the 8,500 at the same point in 2020.

They have been identified for deportation by the Home Office but have been freed from prison to live in the community. Many are using human rights laws to thwart their removal.

A Telegraph analysis of more than 400 immigration appeals by foreign criminals in the past 18 months revealed sex offenders, robbers, fraudsters, arsonists and domestic abusers successfully challenged their deportation by claiming it breached their rights to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The research, the first of its kind, found more than 40 per cent avoided deportation either by claiming it denied them a right to a family life, or that they would face persecution in breach of Article 3 of the ECHR on their return to their home country.

On Monday, Ms Mahmood will pledge a 40 per cent increase in detention capacity as the Government seeks to deport an extra 45,000 foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers over the next decade.

Detention centres at Campsfield in Oxfordshire and Haslar in Hampshire will be tripled in size to 1,000 spaces, increasing the overall capacity to 3,440 for foreign criminals and illegal migrants facing deportation, the highest number in nearly a decade.

Need for speedier deportation

The moves are backed by Andy Burnham, who earlier this month said that he wanted “greater use of detention” so that there were “speedier” deportations of illegal migrants with “no basis for a claim” to be in Britain.

Legislation is due to be unveiled on Tuesday aimed at restricting the ability of foreign criminals and illegal migrants to block their removals from the UK by exploiting the ECHR and modern slavery laws.

Ms Mahmood said: “Returns and deportations are at their highest level in nearly a decade. Nearly 70,000 individuals who have no right to be here have been removed from the UK since this Government took office.

“But we will not stop there. These expansions will see thousands more foreign criminals and illegal migrants who have no right to be here removed.”  

The 70,000 people deported since July 2024 is an increase of 41 per cent on the previous 21 months. Of these 10,000 were foreign national offenders, up 36 per cent.

Labour changed the law this spring to allow foreign criminals to be deported as soon as they were sentenced rather than requiring them to serve 30 per cent of their prison sentence in the UK.

However, Home Office figures show the numbers still in the community despite facing removal orders have trebled in a decade from 5,895 in March 2016 to 19,779 in March this year. The number is up by 2,000 since Labour took office.

Hundreds of the criminals have exploited the delay in their deportation to put down roots in the UK, often making it more difficult to remove them because they have established families and had children in Britain.

The Telegraph analysed 3,000 upper immigration tribunal decisions, of which 426 involved foreign criminals. Of these, 369 had committed offences in the UK with the vast majority (340) appealing their deportation on human rights grounds. Of these, 149 – or 44 per cent – won their appeal.

They included:

• A 60-year-old Spanish drug dealer, jailed for seven years, who was allowed to stay in Britain because of his ex-partner’s depression. A tribunal ruled deportation would be “disproportionate” and would breach his Article 8 ECHR rights because of its impact on his ex-partner and their three children.

• A Polish domestic abuser who was jailed for more than three years and deemed to have a “high risk of harm to children” but who has been allowed to stay in Britain so he can parent his daughter. The tribunal ruled it would breach his Article 8 family rights if he was deported.

• A Pakistani drug dealer who was allowed to stay in Britain after an immigration court heard it would enable him to teach his son how to shave and “talk to him about things a mother could not”. He won an appeal that it would breach his Article 8 rights to a family life if he was deported.

Labour’s immigration and asylum bill will impose new restrictions on use of Article 8, the right to family life, which will mean only immediate family will count to prevent “dubious” connections to distant relatives that were exploited by some migrants. Judges will also be required to prioritise public safety over individual Article 8 rights.

Single-tier system to quicken process

A single appeals body will replace the two-tiered tribunal system, where each of the near-90,000 cases currently takes a year to hear. It will be staffed by independent adjudicators appointed by the Home Office to speed up the process. There will also be new powers to fast-track appeals from late claimants facing removal.

Asylum seekers will by law be restricted to presenting all their claims in a single appeal and will be forced to leave the UK if it fails – even where they have subsequently accrued additional ECHR rights by starting a new relationship or having children in the UK.

Under contracts announced by the Home Office, the Haslar immigration removal centre will increase from 130 to 600 beds, and Campsfield from 160 to 400, giving a cumulative rise in bedspaces from 290 to 1,000.

Ms Mahmood is doubling the budget for immigration enforcement (IE) – which finds, detains and removes illegal migrants – from £681m in 2023-24 to £1.33bn in 2028-29. The number of IE staff is increasing from 4,500 to 7,300 over the same period to boost arrests, raids and deportations.

The Tories said only leaving the ECHR would ensure foreign criminals and illegal migrants were deported in significant numbers. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said it would take 50 years at the current rate of 9,000 enforced removals last year, given estimates of 400,000 illegal migrants in the UK.

“Hardly any foreign criminals were deported to countries outside Europe due to all the bogus claims that get accepted. Tweaking Article 8 and building more detention capacity alone will make no real difference,” he said.