Government Posts £15 Million Contract for Illegal Immigrant Reintegration Programme

The government has posted a £15 million contract notice for a returns programme for illegal immigrants being sent home.
The destinations listed are Albania, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Jamaica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
The Home Office said the project is suitable for those in the voluntary and community sector, and will be inviting bids from charitable and non-profiting making organisations across the UK and overseas.
The contract start date is April 1, 2025, and is to run for three financial years, each year budgeted at £5,000,000.
Contractors will also be helping returnees with their long-term reintegration in their home country, including support with official documentation and family reunification services.
Returnees will also get help finding a job, accessing training or further education, and even support in setting up a business.
The Home Office also says service providers will be engaged in the “monitoring and evaluation of the returning individual’s reintegration outcomes.”
On Thursday, Home Office figures showed that more than 20,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in the UK after crossing the English Channel so far this year.
Some 614 people made the journey in 10 boats on Wednesday, taking the provisional total for 2024 to 20,433, which is 3 percent higher than at the same time in 2023, when 19,801 had arrived but 18 percent lower than 2022 when the figure was 25,065.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We all want to see an end to dangerous small boat crossings, which are undermining border security and putting lives at risk.
The government said it had already conducted nine successful returns flights in the previous six weeks and was redeploying personnel and resources to support further repatriation activities, aiming to increase deportations to their highest level since 2018.
Commenting last week, Peter Walsh, a senior researcher at Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, cast doubt on whether this would be much of an achievement.
Walsh told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme: “If we look at enforced removals, last year there were 6,000 and in 2018 there were 9,000—so this would require 3,000 more, a 50 percent increase, which sounds achievable.
Shadow home secretary and Conservative Party leadership contender James Cleverly has criticised the new Labour government for saying it would get illegal immigration under control, while boats full of asylum seekers continue to land on Britain’s shores.
“Two months into Government and almost 6,000 arrivals later, they’ve proved they were never serious about tackling illegal migration.”
The former home secretary has previously criticised Labour for scrapping the Rwanda scheme, saying it removed a deterrent to people smuggling and illegal immigration.