Even by Donald Trump‘s standards, it was an outrageous spectacle. The President of the United States walking around the detention facility he himself had christened ‘Alligator Alcatraz’, boasting about it being policed by an unseen army of man-eaters, Burmese pythons and mosquitoes.
‘I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking anytime soon,’ Trump declared. ‘We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland, and the only way out is really deportation.’
His critics – not unfairly – charged he was acting more like a megalomaniacal Bond villain rather than the leader of the free world. But they overlooked one important fact. Trump’s evil masterplan to crack down on illegal migration is working. Or, more significantly, the perception he is unleashing an evil masterplan is what’s making it work.
According to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution, the number of US Border Control encounters with illegal migrants has plummeted, down from a peak of 141,000 in the last year of Joe Biden‘s presidency to 7,181 in March.
Seemingly predictably. Those fortunate enough to evade the alligators have been snatched up by one of the gangs of ICE agents fanning out across America’s ‘sanctuary cities’, then swiftly deported by a crack squadron of C-130 aircraft.
Or that’s the White House narrative. But it’s not actually the reality. Yes, the number of arrests by ICE agents has increased, though there is wide monthly variation. But the number of deportations is actually running broadly in parallel to those of the Biden administration, and significantly below their peak under Barack Obama. And in March it was quietly announced the military flights were being suspended on grounds of cost.
It doesn’t matter. In the eyes of the world, Trump is the guy who feeds illegal migrants to crocodiles. And that’s all the deterrence he needs.
Sir Keir Starmer at a press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week. The pilot scheme of the return agreement they brokered will see 2,600 illegal migrants returned in its first year of operation. Yet Starmer’s measures aren’t working, says Dan Hodges
Keir Starmer is not perceived to be the sort of man who would ever dream of doing anything unpleasant to an illegal migrant. Or even say anything unpleasant.
A fortnight ago he emotionally disowned his own speech claiming Britain was becoming an island of strangers. ‘I deeply regret using it,’ he admitted.
Which gives him a problem. Because it means his immigration policy has all the deterrent impact of a piece of wet celery brandished before a charging rhino.
Yes, the Prime Minister has had some incremental successes. The return agreement brokered last week with Emmanuel Macron is a step in the right direction. The pilot scheme – which will see 2,600 illegal migrants returned in its first year of operation – is not, as ludicrously spun, ‘one-in, one-out’, so much as ’15-in, one-out’.
But when the first 50 deportees are shipped back to Calais, it will represent a mass exodus when set against the Tories’ benighted Rwanda scheme.
Starmer and his Home Secretary Yvette Cooper have also increased deportations. Citizenship rights have been stripped from asylum seekers. And better co-ordination with foreign police forces has seen pressure on the smuggling gangs ramped up.
But the reality is these measures are simply not working. The number of small boats arrivals is surging. And the reason they’re surging is because the migrants packing into them, and the traffickers in human misery who are despatching them, think Britain and its Prime Minister are powerless to stop them.
And why wouldn’t they? They see Donald Trump happily dumping asylum seekers into the dark waters of the Florida Everglades. Then they see Sir Keir wringing his hands, and emoting all over the Sunday papers because of a few robust words in a single 30-minute immigration speech.
Benevolence and angst are not going to smash the gangs. Nor will bland, centrist managerialism.
US President Donald Trump (centre), flanked by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (far left), and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (right), tours a migrant detention centre dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz earlier this month. Trump boasted about it being policed by an unseen army of man-eaters, saying: ‘We’re surrounded by miles of treacherous swampland’
Migrants boarding a boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel last month. The number of small boats arrivals is surging, as migrants think Britain is powerless to stop them
If he really wants to stop the boats, the Prime Minister is going to have to get nasty. Or if he can’t get nasty, he’s at least going to have to act nasty.
Obviously he cannot literally replicate Alligator Alcatraz. Though it would undoubtedly win plaudits from the likes of Rupert Lowe and Suella Braverman, fencing off the Isle of Wight with razor wire and packing the Blackgang Chine amusement park with migrants, patrolled by rabid XL Bully dogs, is not a viable option. But other solutions are available. Within Downing Street and the Home Office there are discussions about how to come up a with a headline-grabbing new initiative that would clearly signal the Government’s intent to seize control of the immigration issue, and the nation’s borders.
One is the ‘nuclear option’ of withdrawal from the European Court Of Human Rights. Another is some form of off-shore asylum processing, or removal agreement. Consideration is also being given to what government sources coyly describe as ‘a major expansion of detention space’.
Yet each proposal is currently being ground down beneath the gears of an increasingly dysfunctional No 10 machine.
One government insider blamed the dead – albeit seemingly ubiquitous – hand of Lord Hermer. ‘He just doesn’t want any movement on anything that could be seen to be eroding legal safeguards,’ they claimed.
Another problem is said to be the new muscularism of the parliamentary Labour Party, and a growing perception there has been too much focus within Downing Street on out-reforming Reform. ‘Nigel Farage has spent the past year wagging our dog,’ one MP complained to me.
The truth, though, is that – as ever – Keir Starmer’s biggest problem is himself. He is instinctively empathetic on asylum. He detests having to frame himself as being tough on immigration. Sending migrants into chilly exile, incarcerating them in domestic gulags or cutting them off from the courts of Strasbourg is not in his DNA.
One government insider claimed that Attorney General Lord Hermer (pictured) ‘doesn’t want any movement on anything that could be seen to be eroding legal safeguards’
In which case he is going to need to obtain a DNA transplant. Because Britain cannot continue to indulge the Prime Minister’s progressive conscience.
The loss of control of immigration is now mutating into almost every sphere of public life. Health, housing, crime, welfare, education, the economy. Every major area of policy is now being infected by the real or perceived impact of the migration crisis.
The last government was ejected from office because of it. The implosion of the established parties and surge of Reform is being directly fuelled by it.
And this just represents the legitimate backlash. The deification of race-hate tweeter Lucy Connolly. The casual way people now assert Rishi Sunak cannot be English because he isn’t white. The burning last week of asylum seekers in effigy. These are the fruits of the Prime Minister’s misguided liberalism. And the nation is choking on them.
Keir Starmer needs his own Alligator Alcatraz. And if he can’t discover one, it’s him and his progressive allies who are going to be dragged beneath the swamp.
