Only slightly more than two thousand of the almost 6,000 individuals who were supposed to receive a “Notice of Intent” stating that their asylum petition was rejected have been located.
In a recent paper, the Home Office states that although the Rwandan government has “in principle” agreed to take 5,700 asylum seekers from the UK, only 2,143 of them actually show up for regular check-ins and “can be located for detention.”
It’s unclear if the 3,557 asylum seekers who vanished have withdrawn into hiding to evade deportation or are simply the victims of mishandled paperwork from switching between government-funded lodgings.
This group only consists of asylum seekers who arrived between July 1, 2022, and June 29, 2023, and who have already received a letter informing them of the Rwanda plan.