LONDON: Britain’s government said on Monday it will cost on average about 169,000 pounds ($215,035) to deport each asylum seeker to Rwanda in the first detailed assessment of a high-stakes promise to tackle record numbers of people arriving in small boats.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government wants to send thousands of migrants more than 4,000 miles (6,400 km) away to Rwanda as part of a deal with the central African country agreed last year.
The government sees the plan as central to deterring asylum seekers arriving in small boats from France. Sunak has made this one of his five priorities amid pressure from some of his own Conservative lawmakers and the public to resolve the issue.
In an economic impact assessment published on Monday, the government said the cost of deporting each individual to Rwanda would include an average 105,000 pound payment to Rwanda for hosting each asylum seeker, 22,000 pounds for the flight and escorting, and 18,000 pounds for processing and legal costs.
Home Secretary (interior minister) Suella Braverman said these costs must be considered alongside the impact of deterring others trying to reach Britain and the rising cost of housing asylum seekers.
Unless action is taken, Braverman said that the cost of housing asylum seekers will rise to 11 billion pounds a year, up from about 3.6 billion pounds currently.
“The economic impact assessment clearly shows that doing nothing is not an option,” she said.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeal will hand down its judgment on whether the flights are lawful.
The first planned flight to Rwanda last June was blocked by a last-minute ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which imposed an injunction preventing any deportations until the conclusion of legal action in Britain.
In December, the High Court in London ruled the policy was lawful, but that decision is being challenged by asylum seekers from countries including Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Iran and Vietnam along with some human rights organizations.
Last year, a record 45,000 people came to Britain in small boats across the Channel, mainly from France. Over 11,000 have arrived so far this year.
UK: It costs $215,035 to deport each asylum seeker to Rwanda
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UK: It costs $215,035 to deport each asylum seeker to Rwanda
- Braverman said that the cost of housing asylum seekers will rise to 11 billion pounds a year
Justice Department says it’s releasing 3 million pages from its Jeffrey Epstein files
- The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act
- “Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people,” Blanche said
NEW YORK: The Justice Department said Friday that it was releasing many more records from its investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein, resuming disclosures under a law intended to reveal what the government knew about the millionaire financier’s sexual abuse of young girls and his interactions with rich and powerful people including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the department was releasing more than 3 million pages of documents in the latest Epstein disclosure, as well as more than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.
The files, which were being posted to the department’s website, include some of the several million pages of records that officials said were withheld from an initial release of documents in December.
The documents were disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the law enacted after months of public and political pressure that requires the government to open its files on the late financier and his confidant and onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Today’s release marks the end of a very comprehensive document identification and review process to ensure transparency to the American people and compliance with the act,” Blanche said at a news conference announcing the disclosure.
The prospect of previously unseen records tying Epstein to famous figures has long animated online sleuths, conspiracy theorists and others who have clamored for a full accounting that even Blanche acknowledged might not be met by the latest document dump.
“There’s a hunger, or a thirst, for information that I don’t think will be satisfied by review of these documents,” he said.
He insisted that, “We did not protect President Trump. We didn’t protect — or not protect — anybody,” Blanche said.
After missing a Dec. 19 deadline set by Congress to release all of the files, the Justice Department said it tasked hundreds of lawyers with reviewing the records to determine what needs to be redacted, or blacked out.
Among the materials being withheld from release Friday is information that could jeopardize any ongoing investigation or expose the identities of potential victims of sex abuse. All women other than Maxwell have been redacted from videos and images being released Friday, Blanche said.
The number of documents subject to review has ballooned to roughly six million, including duplicates, the department said.
The Justice Department released tens of thousands of pages of documents just before Christmas, including photographs, interview transcripts, call logs and court records. Many of them were either already public or heavily blacked out.
Those records included previously released flight logs showing that Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet in the 1990s, before they had a falling out, and several photographs of Clinton. Neither Trump, a Republican, nor Clinton, a Democrat, has been publicly accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and both have said they had no knowledge he was abusing underage girls.
Also released last month were transcripts of grand jury testimony from FBI agents who described interviews they had with several girls and young women who said they were paid to perform sex acts for Epstein.
Epstein killed himself in a New York jail cell in August 2019, a month after he was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
In 2008 and 2009, Epstein served jail time in Florida after pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. At the time, investigators had gathered evidence that Epstein had sexually abused underage girls at his home in Palm Beach, but the US attorney’s office agreed not to prosecute him in exchange for his guilty plea to lesser state charges.
In 2021, a federal jury in New York convicted Maxwell, a British socialite, of sex trafficking for helping recruit some of his underage victims. She is serving a 20-year prison sentence at a prison camp in Texas, after being moved there from a federal prison in Florida. She denies any wrongdoing.
US prosecutors never charged anyone else in connection with Epstein’s abuse of girls, but one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, accused him in lawsuits of having arranged for her to have sexual encounters at age 17 and 18 with numerous politicians, business titans, noted academics and others, all of whom denied her allegations.
Among the people she accused was Britain’s Prince Andrew, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor after the scandal led to him being stripped of his royal titles. Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre but settled her lawsuit for an undisclosed sum.
Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia last year at age 41.
