STORY
More than 1,100 people have been prosecuted under the offence of illegal arrival introduced by the Government in 2022, according to information obtained from the Home Office through a Freedom of Information request. The data, secured by University of Manchester research fellow Dr Victoria Taylor, covered cases between July 2022 and January 2026.
The figures showed that 628 of those prosecuted had arrived in the United Kingdom by small boat, including 296 people recorded on surveillance footage steering a dinghy. Only 12 people were convicted of the separate offence of facilitating an arrival, which requires evidence of involvement in organising or assisting the journey rather than simply controlling a boat.
Those prosecuted included survivors of torture and trafficking and at least 30 people whose ages were disputed, 19 of whom spent time in adult prisons. Taylor described the selection of people for prosecution as “arbitrary and cruel”, while campaigners argued that the policy risks criminalising people who travelled irregularly in order to claim asylum.