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'It's not as if the borders are open and people are being welcomed in...'
'That's literally what's happening!'
Alex Armstrong and his panel clash with Labour MP Barry Gardiner on the government's immigration policy.
The video examines the security breach involving Mohammed Yassin, an ISIS-linked individual who entered the UK via a small boat. This case serves as a catalyst for a broader debate on the systemic failures of UK border security, the challenges of processing asylum seekers, and the tension between international humanitarian treaties and national sovereignty.
And welcome to Britain.
That's right, an ISIS terrorist is living in Britain. This is Mohammed Yassin,
35 years old. He attended beheadings and public floggings in Iraq and came to the UK,
surprise surprise, on a small boat. Well, Mohammed headed to Britain because he didn't like it
in France. And he watched a TikTok video saying the country welcomes
asylum seekers. Maybe a little bit like this video.
Well, Mohammed's not wrong, is he? Five star hotels, benefits, freebies. And up until yesterday,
you might have even got a 250 grand brand new house in the rural countryside. Well,
Winchester Crown Court heard that Mohammed had lied about his age and his background.
And as a result, he was given clean clothes and a place at an asylum seeker hotel at your expense
in Basingstoke, Hampshire. Are you surprised? Is anyone surprised anymore? I'm like, yeah,
no, is the resounding answer. Mohammed was reportedly aligned with ISIS, witnessing
stonings and beheadings with like minded individuals, and was also found with a
Kalashnikov rifle. Sounds like a brilliant, brilliant bloke that we want in this country,
doesn't he? This led to his conviction for terrorism in Germany, although, of course,
he wasn't deported back home and instead decided to travel to Britain via France. Well, he's now
serving a two year prison sentence and is likely to be deported upon his release. During his court
appearance, Yassin was described as a danger to the UK by the judge, and he was labelled a
significant public risk. But as I reported yesterday about people smugglers living in
Britain, the overwhelming evidence is clear. And it's that our government has lost control of our
borders and is effectively operating an open borders experiment, letting who could be very
dangerous, violent men, many of whom might have been terrorists like Mohammed and indeed rapists
and murderers. So when will the refugees welcome here people wake up? When will our government
stop letting terrorists literally break into our country? Do you have thoughts on my panel?
Associate comment editor of the Telegraph, Poppy Coburn. That's right, yes. Journalist,
Broadcasting Royalty, Christophe Bufast.
Reform UK Council Councillor for Epping Forest, Jamie McIver.
And Labour MP for Brent West, Barry Gardner.
Better booing this hour, I think, better booing. Barry, I'll start with you on this,
because it's your party in government. I'm glad to hear he'll probably be deported under some of
reforms. I'm happy to hear that. However, your party still isn't getting tough on deportations
of illegal migrants. Most of them get the rights to stay here when their asylum cases have been
seen. The ones that don't go to appeal and it goes to ECHR, they are allowed to stay here under the
right to life. What needs to happen inside Labour Party to be able to boot these people out of
Britain for good before they get asylum hotels and everything else? Yeah, well, look, if you
start off with where we were, for years, this man would never have come to court.
And that's why we have the backlog in the system that we've had.
This guy came in in December of last year. Within six months, he's been taken to court,
he's been put in prison, and he's got a two-year sentence, and he will then be deported,
according to the judge. So that is action. And it's in stark contrast to the 14 years we had
where nobody was going to court. They just didn't process people through the system.
They allowed them to build up in hotels and to simply stagnate there. So this actually is a huge
shift, that we're actually getting people into court, we're making sure that if they have no
right to stay here, if they are criminals and a danger to our society, they are imprisoned for
the crimes that they commit here. Problem is, Barry, problem is, we did a report yesterday,
a great report by the BBC for a change, actually, good to see it, where they found one people
smuggler, prolific millionaire, who had come over here as an illegal migrant, but he'd been in
France for his prolific people smuggling, yet he was here claiming he was an asylum seeker,
and living here. It took the journalists and the media to figure out who he was,
and there's 20 others, according to the BBC. That says to me there's a problem with the system.
Surely the border shouldn't be open at all, if we know that these sorts of people are coming
into Britain. Look, of course you don't want these people in Britain. It's not as if the border is
open and people are being welcomed in. Of course they are. That's literally what's happening.
That's literally what's happening, Barry. No, no, sorry. When somebody comes into this country,
they are processed. If they say that they're an asylum seeker, then they have to be processed
as an asylum seeker. The problem was that they weren't being processed, we are now processing
them, and that's why, Pache, what you've said, actually, the deportations have gone up,
not just the returns, but the deportations have gone up by 40 percent. Okay, yeah, well deportations
have gone up of people who are gaming the system mostly through legal routes, but not from small
boat asylum seekers. That's a tiny, tiny number. I think it's only four percent since 2018,
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I'm going to have to fact check a few of the things you've said here, Barry. I'm sorry about
this. When people say we are getting the asylum backlog down, or we're going for the asylum
backlog, you should not see that as a positive thing. What that actually means is decisions are
being made to say, yes, it is incredibly difficult to deport people from the country because our
definition of asylum, because of all the international treaties we have signed up to,
is so broad that it includes all sorts of people that I think average British people would have
no idea would even have a right to be in this country. So let's look at the case of the man
who killed Rhiannon Sky White. He was a man who arrived on a small boat just a few weeks earlier,
and he was from Sudan. He can never be deported back to Sudan, and his asylum claim would have
been valid. It would be a valid asylum claim. Now the question is not, does the Home Secretary
cherry pick cases, as the Labour Party likes to do, they did it under Tony Blair too,
to pretend that they're tough. The question is, will you change the broken system?
Will you leave the ECHR? Will you exit the 1951 Refugee Convention? Because if you will not,
the border is de facto open. Anyone who turns up on a small boat from this country
will have to be processed, as you say, as an asylum seeker. And the majority of those people
will have a valid asylum claim, and even if they don't, a lot of them can't be deported.
That is why we have hundreds of thousands of people in this country now, who most people
in this country never wanted to be here in the first place, have been voted in every single
election since I was born, to not have them here in the first place, being completely powerless
about who is in their country. Okay, let me go to Jamie next.
One thing I will say is, in this conversation we obviously get lost in talking about the boat
numbers, which by the way, we do have open borders, because the sheer fact that people take
that risk and do that journey proves that they think they can get here. We don't hear much about
the boats that are undetected. We don't hear much about the other ways in which people are breaking
into Britain. When I was younger, and I was at school, I remember my mum telling me about how
she was on her way back from Lakeside, and out from the back of a lorry near Essex, a load of
people just jumped off and ran into Britain. This is happening every single day, so the idea it's
just the boats, it is happening in lots of different ways. But the problem we've got in
this country is we have a government that is a soft touch. Now, we can go on about how Labour
have done a better job than the Tories on this. I agree. What the Tories did to this country in
14 years, when it comes to the borders, is an absolute disgrace. They must never, ever be
forgiven for it. And I think that's why they don't want a general election, because we're
never going to forgive them. But the reality here is we've got people breaking into Britain,
and they are a danger to Britain. And they have proven that in their actions. It speaks volumes
that the government doesn't see this as a priority. It is a national security emergency.
These people need to be detected that are here, detained and deported. But we saw just this week
in Shropshire, how actually we've got a government quite prepared to see new builds go up to put
people in these places. So fundamentally, there's an ideological problem. We have a socialist
government that actually wants to welcome these people, but they know they're losing votes because
of it, which is why they're pretending to talk tough. As Poppy has said, they're pretending to
talk tough on immigration. The truth of the matter is they might as well stand in Dover and say
Christo?
Just firstly, you're absolutely right, we shouldn't forgive the Tories for the 14 years in
which they allowed so many of these small boat people to come over, especially the ones that
ended up in reform who were responsible for it. But if we go to this story, particularly,
there's a couple of things I find really, really worrying about this. He was able to come here and
give a completely dishonest account of who he was and his name, and he was put into a hotel.
So how many other people have done this? How many other people have done this who are in these
hotels or in these places right now? Because the only reason he was caught was because there were
biometrics done on him. And because of the fact that he had had those biometrics in Germany,
where he'd been previously convicted, they were able to be cross-checked. Well, if you are someone
that is aligned or has very ill intent, as you pointed out with the example that you gave here
in the UK, you've come from Sudan or somewhere like that, you're not in the system as having
been convicted or something, your biometrics are going to show that you are okay, and then
potentially you are able to stay. And that is a really big problem. I don't know why we can't just
detain people until we know that they are at least able to stay in the UK, because these people,
some of whom are going to have ill intent, some of whom might be genuine, but some of whom are
going to have this ill intent, are allowed to just sort of roam around and do anything. I don't know
whether we need to leave the ECHR. I think we could deal with it, well I think we could deal
with it quicker, because Denmark is still a part of the ECHR. My worry about the ECHR, I'm not a fan
of the ECHR, but my worry is we're going to get bogged down with trying to do that. It's going to
take forever. Well in 1998 we legislated to basically be closer to the legislation of the ECHR.
Denmark are in the ECHR, they have legislated within their own sovereign governments to not
take on what the ECHR has done. We could do that today with a huge majority and do it far quicker.
We wouldn't need to leave the ECHR. Just to give some stats, I'll come back to you Barry for some
response on this. So the Home Office slash Migration Observatory have said that four percent
of all small boat migrants, so that's around 7,000 to 8,000 people, of 190,000 have been returned
and a lot of those are voluntary. So there is a problem when it comes specifically to small
boat migrants, possibly like this man, many of whom of course haven't committed a crime or been
accused of being a terrorist, but we just can't seem to send them home because we don't have
deportation arrangements with Afghanistan for example, even with Pakistan in the case we've
seen recently. I think the distinction that Christa was making is an important one.
It is right that the biometrics are done but of course not in all cases will that actually
lead you to be able to identify if somebody's a danger to the country. The fact is that the
number of people who are a danger to the country and have proven to be a danger, and there are
examples as Poppy's given and as you have given, who have committed crimes and have come in
illegally to this country. Yes there are and we need to deal with that but it doesn't mean that
the vast majority of those people who are coming here are coming here with ill intent to do that.
Now the example that Poppy gave of somebody coming from Sudan, you've seen what happened
just today in terms of what the UN have said about the chaos in Sudan and the civil war there.
They've said it's the worst humanitarian crisis they've seen. It's quite understandable that
people will be trying to flee from that and therefore if they come to any country they can
come as a refugee and say I have a well-founded fear of persecution in Sudan. Or when they get
to France, this is a safe country. They go to Italy, this is a safe country. What it has to
do with Britain is if they come here and claim asylum we have an obligation then to consider
them. Can I just say something? Go on, go on. I don't think you've got the mood of the nation
here though because of the fact that I think that we might have 10,000 people that come here
who are all wonderful. 9,999 of them might be absolutely wonderful. If one of them has ill intent
I think the British public would say we don't want all 10,000. Without democratic consent you don't get
to say you have obligations. Britain is a state. A state has borders. A state consults the people
who make up its citizenry and asks them what do you want to do and that is the foundation of law.
What irritates me about people who defend the asylum system and the grounds of procedure
is that they haven't asked the public do you agree with the system? Do you accept the system?
Because as far as I can tell every opportunity the public has gotten to give their voice on this
they have said no. I do not agree. I do not want this. I do not want people in hotels. I do not
want people on HMOs. I do not want legal immigration to be higher and they have been ignored by the
Labour. They have been ignored by the Conservatives. If there's another government I'm sure they'll
respond. I actually think that when you frame it in a way that says do you want people who are
in danger to come into your country? Are there people invading your country? Then you'll get
the response that you expect and that you say Poppy. But I think that if you say to people
if somebody is being persecuted, if they are fleeing for their lives... Like English people
if they're fleeing for their lives and that is proven to be the case, should we be a country
that offers those people safe harbour? No. And actually I think the vast majority of the British
public will say yes we have international obligations and one of the worst things about
the situation at the moment is that we've reduced the amount of international aid that we give
that could stabilise some of the situations where people are now having to flee from.
All right Barry I'm going to have to leave it there unfortunately because you've run out of
time. A quick one from you. Do you want them to stay in Britain audience in the room? No.
Would you like them to be deported? Yes. Okay there you have it.