Albanian migrants have posted videos on social media of them cutting off GPS ankle monitors using kitchen scissors.
The videos posted on TikTok show Albanians cutting off their tags, which they have called “British Rolexes”, boasting about easily they can be removed.
Suella Braverman confirmed yesterday that the Government was looking at a potential expansion of the electronic devices, as a way of dealing with the lack of space in detention centres.
This would allow ministers to enact their plans to detain anyone who arrived in the UK illegally so they could be sent to a safe third country instead.
Braverman said that Government was looking at a potential expansion of the electronic devices
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Over 19,000 migrants have crossed the Channel this year but there are currently only 2,500 detention places.
Ministers have been forced to consider other measures due to this shortage, The Telegraph has reported.
The move comes after Rishi Sunak’s small boats laws, which give minister powers to detain anyone who crosses the border illegally and deport them back to their home country or a third country, such as Rwanda.
Braverman said: “We need to exercise a level of control of people if we’re to remove them from the United Kingdom. We are considering a range of options. We have a couple of thousand detention places in our existing removal capacity.
“We will be working intensively to increase that but it’s clear we’re exploring a range of options, all options, to ensure that we have that level of control over people so that they can flow through our systems swiftly to enable us to thereafter remove them from the United Kingdom.”
The videos, which have now been removed, show different migrants cutting off their GPS tags.
One TikTok video shows a man cutting off his monitor, which left some users asking him questions for further information.
A user asked: “Where are the police?” He replies: “In the police station, lol.”
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Suella Braverman said: “We need to exercise a level of control of people if we’re to remove them from the United Kingdom"
PAAnother said that removing the ankle tag would result in a 28-day prison sentence, but a reply stated “doing 28 days in prison is nothing. It is as easy as eating bread and cheese.”
Migrants who remove their tags risk being jailed or deported.
In 2022, Albanians made up more than a quarter of the 45,755 people who crossed the Channel and represented 28 per cent of migrants who had been tagged.
This year, the numbers have fallen dramatically, after Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, pledged to return as many illegal Albanian migrants as possible.
Darren Grimes, commentator at GB News, posted online: “If those coming here illegally, throwing their documents into the ocean, aren’t coming here to get up to no good, why are they cutting off their ankle tags and refusing to return to their registered addresses? We’re fuelling a new crime wave by allowing illegal migration.”
