A government source has confirmed to Sky News its new Illegal Migration Bill would “seal off all the loopholes” and that UK officials are “certainly working towards getting the flights off by summer”.
It comes as the home secretary signed an update to the government’s migrants agreement with Rwanda, expanding its scope to “all categories of people who pass through safe countries and make illegal and dangerous journeys to the UK”.
A Home Office statement said it would allow the government to deliver on its new legislation as it would mean those coming to the UK illegally, who “cannot be returned to their home country”, will be “in scope to be relocated to Rwanda”.
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Rwanda: Braverman visits facilities
The new bill would see those who come to the UK detained and returned to their home country – or a “safe third country such as Rwanda”.
Suella Braverman hailed the strengthening of the UK’s migration partnership with Rwanda as she paid a visit to Kigali in Rwanda for official engagements this weekend – including meeting with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the country’s minister for foreign affairs and international cooperation, Dr Vincent Biruta.
No one has made the journey yet, after a flight was stopped at the eleventh hour in June last year following an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
On Saturday, Ms Braverman and Dr Biruta signed the update to the Memorandum of Understanding, expanding the partnership further.
Rwanda has ‘plentiful resources’
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Speaking to the media on Saturday, Ms Braverman said: “What the Bill does is dramatically and significantly reduces the legal routes available – the claims available to people to thwart their removal or relocation from the United Kingdom.
“To delay their detention. To undermine our rules. And what we are seeing at the moment is people using the modern slavery claims, using asylum claims, using human rights laws… just to thwart our duty to control our borders.”
She continued: “Our Bill fixes that, and we have struck the right balance between fairness, on the one hand, for delivering a robust system of legal duties and powers to detain and remove, and compassion – so that we are relocating people to a safe country.
“And as we have seen here in Rwanda, there are plentiful resources to properly support and accommodate people so that they can live safe and secure lives.”
She also took a tour of new housing developments, which will be used to relocate people, and visited new, modern, long-term accommodations that will support those who are relocated to Rwanda.
One refugee living in Rwanda, Fesseha Teame, told reporters on Saturday that he had “never felt I have been considered as a foreigner”, but said he did not see the African nation having the capacity to hold “many thousands” of migrants.
The 48-year-old, with a wife and four children, spoke to the media after the home secretary claimed: “Rwanda has the capacity to resettle many thousands of people, and can quickly stand up accommodation once flights begin.”
Ms Braverman also said the suggestion that Rwanda could only take 200 people is a “completely false narrative peddled by critics who want to scrap the deal”.
The 200 figure quoted was used by Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo when speaking to British journalists last year.
Ms Braverman met with investment start-ups as well as entrepreneurs to discuss the range of business and employment opportunities available to people in Rwanda.
Earlier this month, the prime minister announced a package that will see a new detention centre established in France as well as the deployment of more French personnel and enhanced technology to patrol beaches in a shared effort to drive down illegal migration.
Ms Braverman said she was visiting Rwanda this weekend to “reinforce the government’s commitment to the partnership as part of our plan to stop the boats and discuss plans to operationalise our agreement shortly”.
Porn star Stormy Daniels has described to jurors an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter she claims she had with Donald Trump in 2006.
Ms Daniels was testifying at the former president’s criminal trial over hush money she was paid to keep silent about the alleged encounter during the presidential race.
But it was not all bad news for Mr Trump. On the day the court heard from Ms Daniels, his trial in Florida on charges of illegally keeping classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving office, scheduled to start on 20 May, was postponed indefinitely by a federal judge.
Ms Daniels, 45, speaking at the “hush money” trial, said she tried not to think about having sex with him while it was allegedly taking place.
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Stormy Daniels recalls bedroom encounter with Trump
Mr Trump, 76, stared straight ahead when she entered the courtroom and occasionally shook his head and whispered to his lawyer.
After the lunch break, Mr Trump’s defence lawyers demanded a mistrial over what they said were prejudicial and irrelevant comments.
The judge rejected the defence’s request and said defence lawyers should have raised more objections during the testimony.
Later in the day, the Trump team used its opportunity to question Ms Daniels to paint her as motivated by personal hatred of the former president and hoping to profit off her claims against him.
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“Am I correct that you hate President Trump?” defence lawyer Susan Necheles asked.
“Yes,” Ms Daniels acknowledged.
Hush money payment
In the final weeks of Mr Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, his then-lawyer and personal fixer Michael Cohen paid Ms Daniels $130,000 (£103,000) to keep quiet about what she described as an awkward and unexpected sexual encounter with Mr Trump at a celebrity golf outing in Lake Tahoe in July 2006.
Mr Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2018 related to the payments and served more than a year in prison – with federal prosecutors saying he acted at Mr Trump’s direction.
Mr Trump, the Republican candidate for president again this year, has pleaded not guilty to charges of falsifying business records to cover up the payment and denies having sex with Ms Daniels.
Imbalance of power
Ms Daniels described how an initial meeting at the golf tournament, where they discussed the adult film industry, progressed to a “brief” sexual encounter she said Mr Trump initiated after inviting her to dinner and back to his hotel suite.
She said she did not feel physically or verbally threatened during the encounter, but she perceived an imbalance of power, with Mr Trump being “bigger and blocking the way”.
She said she found it “hard to get my shoes” after it ended “because my hands were shaking so hard”.
“He said, ‘Oh, it was great. Let’s get together again, honey bunch’,” Ms Daniels said. “I just wanted to leave.”
Mr Trump has been charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payments.
Speaking outside of court at the end of the day, Mr Trump said: “This was a very big day, a very revealing day. As you see their case is totally falling apart.”
Ms Daniels is expected to return to the witness stand when the trial resumes tomorrow.
There are moments, more than others, that scream the humiliation of it all.
Take this, before Tuesday’s proceedings got underway. “No descriptions of genitalia or anything but it’s important to elicit that she had sex with him.”
It was the prosecution’s assurance prior to questioning Stormy Daniels after Donald Trump’s lawyers had objected, in advance, to her testifying to the details of sexual acts.
It would be that kind of day in this kind of trial.
In a dingy New York courtroom, this was the president and the porn star, together again, in a reunion most reductive for Mr Trump.
He might have secured guarantees on anatomical detail but, from the moment the court heard “The People call Stormy Daniels” this was Mr Trump with his trousers down, no doubt.
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Ms Daniels told her story, of growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the daughter of a single mother. She edited her high school newspaper, enjoyed ballet dancing and horses and had ambitions to be a technician.
By the time she met Mr Trump, aged 27, we learned she was an adult film actress and director, star of the likes of 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up.
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By her telling, the Trump encounter was more Austin Powers – the penthouse suite, the satin pyjamas and the spanking with a rolled-up magazine.
“Bullshit,” Mr Trump was heard to mutter. His problem is that this kind of bullshit sticks.
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Stormy Daniels recalls bedroom encounter with Trump
Whatever his lawyers’ protestations about Ms Daniels’ credibility – and there are holes – that’s hardly the headline for a watching, voting, public.
What will they take from court to the polling booth in November? Quite apart from the imagery, what message does it send to key demographics?
An affair with a porn star, whilst married, is a poor fit with the principles of evangelicals, so critical to the Trump vote in 2016. Suburban women might also reel from this tawdry peek backstage at the presidency.
How much will Mr Trump worry? About $130,000 (£103,000) worth. It is the premium he paid to stop the story coming out in the first place.
There is so much confusion around any potential deal.
But most people here want their prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to an agreement and get the captives back home.
We had a chance encounter with Yehuda Cohen.
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His 19-year-old son Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier, was taken on 7 October.
Mr Cohen’s message to Israel’s leadership was simple – take a deal.
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Right now, however, he is not very hopeful.
“Nothing is moving, we will feel better when something will start moving, that a deal will be on the table, agreed and hostages will start being released,” he said.
Mr Cohen had particular criticism for Mr Netanyahu.
He said of the PM: “He has his own considerations, mainly his private considerations – he wants to survive, he’s thinking only about himself.”
Mr Cohen even challenged Mr Netanyahu in person a few weeks ago about whether a ceasefire would guarantee the release of all the hostages. He did not get an answer.
But she admits: “I’m afraid the deal won’t be done, so I don’t even let myself think about it.
“Until someone tells me – Simona, your daughter has come back, I don’t think about it.”
Seven months into this conflict, following Hamas’ killings and kidnappings, the latest talk of an agreement – however near or far it could be – simply provides no relief for so many hostage families.