Bombshell new poll delivers blow to Andy Burnham as Labour faces migrant crisis

Labour is facing a “crisis of legitimacy” over its failure to deport foreign criminals roaming Britain’s streets, critics declared. Some 21,294 convicted offenders facing removal are living in communities, according to Home Office figures.

And new analysis has revealed crooks from Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Algeria, Nigeria and Bangladesh are far more likely to still be in the UK. It comes as a new poll – shared exclusively with the Daily Express – suggests almost 70% of Britons want every foreign criminal convicted of an offence in the UK to be removed. Robert Bates, research director at the Centre for Migration Control, said: “The vast majority of the British public hold the common-sense view that any migrant who commits a crime in this country should be deported, yet we now know criminals from some countries face no real prospect of removal.

“Whilst Trump is now rowing back on his own removals agenda, all available evidence suggests the British electorate are more uncompromising on this matter than Americans, and would be in favour of a mass deportation programme.

“The Home Office is facing a crisis of legitimacy – putting 20,000 foreign criminals back on Britain’s streets has exposed the public to a real and present danger. Not only is the government failing to act, but it is going to court to block the publication of migrant crime figures to deliberately hide the truth about migrant crime from the public.”

Some 69% of Britons believe foreign nationals should be deported if they are convicted of a crime, according to a poll for the Centre for Migration Control. This includes 60% of Labour voters in the 2024 General Election, and 62% if a national ballot were called today.

Conservative and Reform voters overwhelmingly support plans to deport every foreign criminal, 95% and 96%, respectively. But one in five people in London oppose proposals to deport every foreign criminal, according to the poll carried out by Find Out Now.

Home Office figures, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, show 773 offenders were awaiting deportation to Nigeria in June 2025 – the latest published figures. But only 37 had been returned over the previous 12 months.

And 775 Jamaicans subject to enforcement action are still roaming around in towns, villages and cities. Only 24 were booted out in the previous 12 months. Some 569 Algerians were languishing in the community in June 2025. Over the 12 months to June 2025, 25 were sent back to Algiers.

Only 3.1% of convicted Jamaicans have been deported, along with 3.4% of Sri Lankans, 3.7% of Moroccans, 4.2% of Algerians, 4.8% of Nigerians and 6.2% of Bangladeshis.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp: “It took me a year to get these figures out of the Home Office, who spent a year trying to hide them and only released them last week when faced with an appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

“Now the shameful truth is clear – while large numbers of Eastern European criminals are deported, very few are deported to countries outside Europe. Just 5% of Nigerian serious criminals in the community were deported last year and only 3% of Jamaicans.

“Many have gone on to commit serious offences, including murder and rape, when they should have been deported after their first crime. They use often made-up human rights, asylum and modern slavery claims to stay here.

“Shabana Mahmood once even wrote a letter protesting against the deportation of any Jamaican criminal. I’m sick to the stomach of the supposed rights of foreign criminals being put ahead of keeping British women and girls safe.

“If I’m Home Secretary, we will leave the ECHR and slavery research and ban asylum claims by foreign criminals so they all get deported. I will put the safety of British citizens first. It’s a shame Labour is not doing the same.”

Home Office figures show 21,294 convicted crooks are living in the community because they have not been deported.

This is up by more than 1,000 in the past three months alone, with officials blaming the Government’s changes to sentencing rules. Ministers introduced a “presumption” against sentences of under 12 months and tweaked deportation rules in a bid to boot out foreign criminals given a suspended sentence of 12 months or more.

But critics fear it is “just making more people eligible for return who aren’t going to leave”. It has nearly doubled from 10,373 in the final three months of 2020.

And Home Office records show 82 convicted killers and 233 rapists left immigration detention facilities in the year to June. But the Government will not say how many of these were released on bail or how many had been deported.

It comes as US president Donald Trump signalled that he may be willing to water down his own migrant crackdown.

The Republican leader said he “got an A+ for closing up the border” and got “very high marks for getting the bad ones out”.

“But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally,” he added.

“Now, there is a large part of the country that thinks that they should be put out. And there’s a large part of the country that thinks that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes.

“I think it was too tough. A lot of people would say that it’s great, but a lot of people think it’s too tough.”

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “Any foreign national who receives a prison sentence in the UK is referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity and will be barred from ever returning.

“Returns are at their highest level in nearly a decade. Nearly 12,000 foreign criminals, including murderers and rapists, have been returned or deported in the two years since the last election – a 41% increase on the two years prior.”