Ankle tag pilot flops as two thirds of migrants wearing trackers go missing

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The Home Office lost contact with two thirds of asylum seekers who had been electronically tagged, a report has revealed.

The migrants – including many who had crossed the Channel on small boats – were fitted with ankle tags to help the Home Office track their movements and ensure they reported fortnightly to immigration officials.

However, the pilot scheme involving 1,000 migrants to test the technology found that it failed to improve attendance rates – and, in the end, made no difference to the number of contacts made with the Home Office.

Officials admitted this could have been because 88 per cent of those who were tagged were Albanians, who were largely regarded as economic migrants rather than genuine asylum seekers, when they accounted for the bulk of migrants crossing the Channel.

After 500 days, officials reported that two thirds of those on tags were no longer in contact with the Home Office, the same rate as a “control” group who were tag-free.

“At the end of the pilot, only 32 per cent, (162 out of 502) of the tagged group were compliant with reporting, and 34 per cent (174 out of 509) of the control group were compliant,” said the report.

Nearly one in six of the tagged group (16 per cent) had absconded, compared with 16 per cent of those from the control group without tags.

Even those who were classed as compliant had tried to break free of their tags, with officials overseeing the pilot scheme reporting that there were nearly 1,400 attempts to tamper with the electronic ankle straps or the batteries.

The Telegraph revealed in 2023 how Albanian criminals and migrants had been demonstrating how to remove the ankle tags.

They posted TikTok videos showing how use kitchen scissors to cut off the tags, which they have described as “British Rolexes”.

They boasted that it enabled them to abscond despite the threat of jail or other sanctions for breaching their immigration bail.

In one video, the man cutting off his tag is asked: “Where are the police?” He replies: “In the police station, lol. I took it off myself.”

Another posted a comment asking: “If I cut mine off and changed my address, would that work or am I still in trouble?” A reply read: “When you cut it off, don’t go back home lol.”

A third claimed to have scammed an old-style tag, which simply records whether someone is at home, unlike a GPS tag, which tracks someone 24/7 at all locations.

“I removed the tag and left it at home so I am not worried at all,” the man said.

A fourth warned that removing the tag could see an automatic 28-day return to prison.

However, a reply said: “Doing 28 days in prison is nothing. It is as easy as eating bread and cheese.”

A Home Office spokesman admitted: “This pilot scheme, conducted under the previous government, sought to explore the impact of electronic monitoring on compliance rates, but the evaluation report notes that its findings cannot be applied to the asylum-seeker cohort as a whole, given the scheme’s heavy concentration on Albanian nationals.

“Nevertheless, the evaluation report has been published in the interests of transparency, given the public funds spent on running the pilot scheme.

“This government is determined to restore order to the asylum system so that it operates swiftly, firmly and fairly.
“This includes working with our partners to respond to loss of contact, non-compliance and absconding.”

Economic migrants whose economic migration is almost completely organised crime. I’m not shocked criminals who are only using the asylum system to remain in the UK and commit more crimes don’t want to be tracked electronically while committing more crimes.

Can I place a bet on whether the Telegraph had previously advocated for the tagging of migrants?

Imagine that! People who shouldn’t be here hiding from the people keeping track of them. Who’d have thunked it?

In other news water is wet and teapots made of chocolate have a tendency to melt.

This is all such a massive waste of money and resources – we need an immediate introduction of zero tolerance for all illegal channel migrants: deport them to a safe third country or their home country – their choice) – they are all after all arriving on dinghies run by Calais based gangsters so it’s really not that unreasonable to say sorry no you can’t stay.

Until we have a zero tolerance approach the economic migrants will continue to arrive in large numbers, because there’s no reason not to.

We should only be taking in vetted refugees direct from refugee camps in active warzones, that way we know exactly who we’re giving asylum to, and that they are genuine refugees.

Yes I’m sure those 2/3 some how cost the tax payer even further. Doubt they are cutting off tags to become functional members of society.

Apparently, meat is traceable at every point from the shop right back to the farm it came from… The answer is simple, give each immigrant a cow.

So they believe people who have arrived here under non conforming means, to those who actually apply the hard way are going to comply with an ankle tag. We are ruled by idiots, at this point I reckon we kick out the treasury personnel and the home office personnel and instal the Albanian gangs that are running the trafficking they seem more savvy in making money and people management.

Another terrible Tory policy which labour will kop the blame for.

I mean, were they expecting it to work or are they just trying to say “Welp we tried guys. It’s just tooooooo hard”.

Why expect anything different 

In these almost dystopian times my first thought upon reading that headline was “who is tracking them down & where are they taking them” .
My next thought was that the program was clearly not thought through if the trackers can really just be easily removed by the people themselves. And the third one went back to dystopia and questioned if that maybe had been the plan from the start.

Whelp. New conspiracy theory unlocked.

Not me thinking this was an airplane pilot on a tag.

What a F*cking suprise. What brain dead left wing woke idiot thought this would work in the first place.

They didn’t come here to follow the rules you dimwits. They came for the free shit and lax enforcement of rules

There should be a list of countries that people can come from, if you don’t have documentation you can’t get in due to national security concerns, you don’t meet these two conditions you are detained until you give a return location where you are promptly sent.

Are these the same people the blue haired brigade regularly fly the flags around telling us to home them? Or is it the rapey ones?