Brits send prison vans to round up illegals

Daily Mail:

Prison vans are to cruise the streets of Britain searching for illegal - immigrants.

The "mobile detention centres" will aim to catch recently arrived foreigners as they emerge from peoplesmuggling lorries.

Immigration officers will hold the suspects inside the vans until background checks are performed.

If they are found to be here illegally, they will be taken by police to a major detention centre in Oakington, Cambridgeshire, before being repatriated.

The sheer number of bogus arrivals has meant police have been too busy to do the job.

The first vans are due to be launched in Northamptonshire following a successful try-out in ports along the South Coast.

The vehicles were ordered by Immigration Minister Liam Byrne after the Government was embarrassed by two incidents last September.

Police caught 16 illegal Iraqi immigrants leaving a lorry in Flore, Northamptonshire, but, instead of alerting the authorities, told them to travel almost 100 miles to a detention centre in Croydon and sign on as asylum-seekers.

The previous week, five African men had been found in a lorry in Long Buckby, Northamptonshire.

On that occasion, the police actually gave them a lift to a railway station before asking them to catch a train to Croydon.

...

A leaked secret Government memo last week revealed that immigration officers had been ordered to stop deporting foreign students who overstay their visas, suggesting that they were too busy to do so.

And last month, a leaked document from the Prison Service revealed that immigration bosses had "no interest" in deporting foreign prisoners who had served less than a year behind bars.

It appears that the US is not the only place where there is a lack of seriousness about enforcing the borders. You would think that a relatively small island nation could keep an eye on its ports of entry. Apparently it is the intention to keep these guys on the move in the vans? I hope they have a portable potty on board and can hit the drive through at McDonald's.