FIRST ON FOX — A top British MP and former home secretary is warning that governments in developed countries need to show the “political will” to limit immigration, both legal and illegal, that voters want “robust action” from their representatives and that the global migration crisis will be a major issue for voters in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
Suella Braverman served as U.K. home secretary, making her the top official on matters related to border enforcement and immigration, from October 2022 to November 2023.
She championed lower levels of immigration overall and stricter enforcement of laws related to illegal immigration. She was also a supporter of Britain’s exit from the European Union.
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She has also been a champion of the U.K.’s plan to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda and fought both in the Cabinet and from outside it to make it happen.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, left, and Home Secretary Suella Braverman attend a meeting with the community and police leaders following the announcement of a new police task force to help officers tackle grooming gangs April 3, 2023, in Rochdale, England. (Phil Noble/Pool/Getty Images)
While there has been a great deal of attention given to Britain’s illegal immigration crisis, particularly from small boats coming across the English Channel, Braverman warns that illegal and legal immigration are two sides of the crisis, noting legal immigration numbers are much higher despite successive governments pledging to reduce that number.
“Last year alone, the net migration figures into the U.K. topped an unprecedented number of 700,000. And just compare that back to 2019, at the time of our general election, when the Conservative Party pledged in our manifesto to lower the numbers,” she said. “Then, as they stood, 245,000. And then if you even go back to 2016, when we had the Brexit referendum, numbers were far lower even then.”
As for the illegal immigration crisis, the government has yet to send a plane of illegal immigrants to Rwanda, with whom it made a deal.
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Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman speaks in the House of Commons, London, on an illegal migration bill March 7, 2023. (UK Parliament/Andy Bailey/ho photo via AP)
“The premise of the Rwanda scheme is based on deterrence. We believe that the model of people-smuggling gangs has to be broken. So, tens of thousands of people are paying these gangs to cross the channel illegally and break into the United Kingdom because they believe they’ll be able to stay here,” she said.
“If they are relocated to a third country like Rwanda, we believe that they will no longer make that journey in the first place,” she said. “And we’ve modeled it to some degree on what worked in Australia. The Australians managed to solve their illegal maritime immigration problem by relocating people from mainland Australia to Papua New Guinea and Nauru. And in quite a short space of time, the number of people coming into Australia illegally dramatically fell.”
Migrants packed tightly onto a small inflatable boat bail water as they attempt to cross the English Channel near the Dover Strait, the world’s busiest shipping lane, Sept. 7, 2020, off the coast of Dover, England. (Luke Dray/Getty Images)
However, before a plane could take off, activists appealed, and the scheme was blocked by the European Court of Human Rights and, subsequently, by the U.K.’s Supreme Court for being in contravention of the European Convention of Human Rights. Many Conservatives, including Braverman, believe the U.K. needs to leave that charter.
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“My proposition to the prime minister has been that we need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. We need to repeal the Human Rights Act so that the government, the elected government of the day, which has a mandate to control illegal migration, can actually put the interests of the British people first and impose meaningful border control,” she said.
Britain is not the only country to struggle with the issues of migration. Countries in the European Union are also struggling to stop illegal migration and facing backlash over the number of immigrants coming in overall.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is in the fourth year of a historic crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought to Dover, Kent, by the RNLI after a small boat incident in the channel. (Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)
Braverman, who is popular with Conservative voters and could become a future leader of the party, said the world is in a global migration crisis, “and I think that the international community hasn’t necessarily come up with a coherent plan to deal with that global migration crisis.
“Secondly, I would say the other issue, the other problem is that many of these developed countries simply haven’t demonstrated the necessary political will to do what’s essential to fix these problems,” she said.
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Multiple migrants wade through the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass, Texas, Sept. 27, 2023 (Benjamin Lowy for Fox News Digital )
Braverman, who was named Sue Ellen at birth after the character in the American TV show “Dallas,” met with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas when she served as home secretary and said she believed that immigration will be a major issue in the U.S. election as numbers increase.
“The impact on communities around the United States of America is getting more and more pressing. And, as a result, this issue is going to be a very big issue in your presidential election. People want solutions. They want border control, and they want robust action by their elected officials,” she said.
Fox News’ Aubrie Spady contributed to this report.
