More than 1,100 people, including survivors of torture and trafficking, have been convicted of illegally arriving in the UK since 2022, according to freedom of information data.<\/p>\n
The Home Office<\/a> introduced the offence of illegal arrival in 2022 in a bid to deter those planning to come to the UK by small boat or by other irregular means such as lorries.<\/p>\n The decision was widely condemned at the time because the refugee convention states that those seeking sanctuary should not be criminalised for the way they travel, as they often do not have the option to move legally from an unsafe country to a safe one.<\/p>\n FoI data obtained from the Home Office<\/a> by the criminologist Dr Victoria Taylor, a research fellow at the University of Manchester, reveals 1,109 people were prosecuted for illegal arrival between July 2022 and January 2026.<\/p>\n The data shows 628 arrived on a small boat, 296 of whom were captured on surveillance drone footage steering a dinghy. Others had previous immigration history in the UK.<\/p>\n Just 12 people have been convicted of the separate offence of facilitation, after steering the dinghies they arrived on. It is harder for the Home Office and Crown Prosecution Service to secure evidence that people on a dinghy were involved in organising a journey across the Channel than to prosecute them for illegal arrival.<\/p>\n People have been identified as having their \u201chand on the tiller\u201d for many reasons, including having boating experience, steering in return for discounted passage, taking it in turns, or being under duress.<\/p>\n In one illegal arrival case, the Home Office settled a judicial review relating to a trafficking survivor from South Sudan<\/a> who was forced at gunpoint to pilot a small boat. Officials have now agreed to ensure greater protection for trafficking victims in these cases.<\/p>\n Emily Soothill, partner at Deighton Pierce Glynn, who represented the man, said: \u201cUnfortunately it is clear from our client\u2019s case that potential victims of trafficking are regularly being convicted for illegal arrival and imprisoned for many months. The concessions made in our client\u2019s case underline the need for a robust and consistent application of the UK\u2019s modern slavery framework to prevent survivors of trafficking from being wrongly treated as criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of those convicted of the various offences were survivors of torture and trafficking, and there were at least 30 age disputed children among them, 19 of whom had spent time in adult prisons.<\/p>\n