THE number of foreign criminals out on the streets has hit a record high and is only going up.
Some 19,491 released from jail in the UK but eligible for removal are still here.
The total is even thought to include some offenders who have been out of prison for more than five years but have still not been flown home.
The overall figure is an increase of almost 5,000 crooks in three years, and nearly 1,000 since Sir Keir Starmer became PM.
It has also more than tripled since 2017, when the number was 5,933.
Our figures come after the Home Office announced in August it would boot out foreign crooks as soon as they are sentenced to save cash.
Then Justice Secretary and now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood claimed the new powers to send them packing was “radical action” towards fixing the UK’s creaking borders.
The legal power to remove came into effect in September.
But Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “Every single foreign national offender who is eligible for removal should be deported.”
Crafty foreign crooks have been able to rely on a range of reasons to remain.
We told last month that German drug dealer Saleh Hamid had swerved deportation because he did not speak German well enough and faced “very significant obstacles”.
Earlier this year, migrant Jason Furtado was jailed for life for murdering a schoolboy but was meant to have been deported nine years ago after serving time for theft and motoring offences.
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “This government will not allow foreign criminals and illegal migrants to exploit our laws, which is why we are reforming human rights laws and the broken appeals system, allowing us to scale up deportations.”
She added: “All foreign national offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity.”
