PM Theresa May on 26 June necessitated the expulsion of thousands of European criminals after Brexit, as she presented her detailed plans to grant three million EU citizens in Britain a certain “settled status” and a right to live in the UK.
The government's post-Brexit immigration rules will impose tight curbs on convicts guilty of violent crimes, sex and drug offences. Under the current rules, ministers could deport European inmates if they receive a sentence of more than two years. But in 2015, only 44 criminals from EU were repatriated – including only 14 of the 645 Romanians and 12 of the Lithuanians. Britain's stand to expel convicted criminals from EU has long enraged MPs who had warned last year that laws restricting deportation were “undermining confidence in the UK's immigration system.”
The EU law provides extra protection against deportation, requiring “serious grounds” of public security to deport them if the criminal has lived in Britain for five years. The threshold is upgraded to “imperative grounds” with each criminal assessed on an individual ground if the person has lived in the UK for more that ten years.
The maximum convicts are from Poland and Ireland, and is thought to be about 13,000 foreign offenders in Britain, including 6,000 who have served sentences and are awaiting deportation. Post Brexit, new rules will require the home secretary to prove only that deporting a European criminal is “conducive to the public good”. But the Human Rights Act will still mean that the government will have to consider all foreign criminals length of residence, age and family life.
