Home Office data shows 28,400 people arrived in the United Kingdom via irregular small boat crossings of the English Channel in the nine months to the end of September 2026, a 14% increase on the same period in 2025 and a trajectory that, if maintained, would produce the highest annual total since records began. The 2022 record stands at 45,755 arrivals.
The figures arrive as the Labour government has formally wound down the Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, returning the £290 million paid to the Rwandan government and closing the processing facilities established in Kigali. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper described the scheme in the Commons in July 2026 as “expensive, unworkable, and in fundamental tension with our treaty obligations.” The opposition disputed this characterisation and called for the scheme’s reinstatement.
The Border Security Bill
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, introduced in February 2026, creates a new Border Security Command with enhanced enforcement powers, increases the maximum sentence for people smuggling from 14 years to life imprisonment, and requires foreign nationals who arrive irregularly to be ineligible for asylum consideration for a fixed period of five years. Human rights organisations including Refugee Action and the UNHCR UK have challenged the five-year ineligibility provision as incompatible with the 1951 Refugee Convention.
The Bill is at report stage in the Lords as of October 2026. Government ministers have indicated they will resist Lords amendments to the ineligibility clause. The House of Lords Constitution Committee described the clause in September 2026 as raising “fundamental questions about the UK’s compliance with its international obligations.”
Detention Capacity
FOI responses to Exposed News from the Home Office show that immigration removal centre capacity stood at 2,400 places as of August 2026, against a detained population of 2,190. The Home Office has announced plans to increase capacity to 3,500 places by 2028 through expansion of existing facilities and one new centre. Asylum seeker support organisations have challenged the adequacy of medical and mental health provision in existing centres; an HMIP inspection of Brook House in July 2026 found mental health support provision “inadequate.”