Operation Rwanda: Inside Rishi's crack deportation teams charged with rounding ... trends now
After year's of furious debate Britain's Rwanda crackdown has finally begun, with Home Office agents this week detaining the first set of illegal migrants.
Armoured Immigration Enforcement officials took part in a series of dramatic dawn raids across the UK to round up asylum seekers who crossed the Channel in small boats.
Groups of men were pictured being handcuffed before being taken to one of seven immigration removal centres, where they will be held until they can be deported to Africa.
Codenamed 'Operation Vector', some 800 immigration agents are involved in the effort, which will see the first flights taking off in nine to 11 weeks, with 2,143 asylum seekers being targeted in the opening salvo of the project.
The landmark policy has been hailed by some as a potential 'Hail Mary' for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as he seeks to stave off a white-washing at the next General Election - especially after the disastrous local election results.
But it has proved divisive, even within the ranks of the Tory faithful, with insiders admitting Conservative MPs are 'split down the middle', with some on the Right saying the policy doesn't go far enough and could fall foul to fresh legal 'challenges', while others are fearful over the cost of it all.
'Put simply, the PM has to deliver on this and finally get this policy off the ground,' one insider told MailOnline. 'There's genuine concern over whether the flights will take off and whether it will shift the balance enough... people are fed up at how long it's taken.'
Now, MailOnline will reveal just how the operation works, what will happen in the coming weeks and just what sort of hurdles the ambitious project could face.
How Operation Rwanda will work. This graphic shows the seven immigration removal centres where migrants will be held before they're put on a plane bound for the African country, with the first flights earmarked to take place in July
Migrants board a small boat in an attempt to cross the English Channel, on the beach of Gravelines, near Dunkirk, northern France on April 26
Immigration Enforcement agents were seen this week carrying out raids to detain the first Rwanda deportees (pictured)
The first illegal migrants, set to be deported to Rwanda, were rounded up by Immigration Enforcement agents this week, with some being seen led away in handcuffs
How do the raids work and who decides who's getting deported?
The Rwanda plan was first announced by the Government back in April 2022, when Priti Patel was Home Secretary.
The first migrants were meant to be deported on a flight back in June 2022. But it was cancelled minutes before take-off after an intervention by the European Court of Human Rights, in an embarrassing blow for the Tories.
Since then, it has been bogged down by legal challenges amid accusations it would be an 'inhumane' act to deport people to the African country, which has a patchy record when it comes to human rights.
It was eventually given the green light after peers in the House of Lords approved the Government's Rwanda bill earlier this month.
And while all the political turbulence continued to rage, the Home Office was busy building a list of 5,700 illegal migrants earmarked for deportation to Rwanda, whose applications for asylum have been rejected.
In 2023, almost 46,000 migrants sailed across the Channel to arrive illegally in the UK - with the Government now spending £15million a day to house them in hotels
The first deportations to Rwanda were meant to happen in June 2022 on this Boeing 767 at Boscombe Down Air Base. But the flight to Kigali was dramatically grounded before take-off following a legal ruling (pictured is the jet on the runway in 2022)
Earlier, a coach with outriders left Colnbrook, Heathrow Immigration Removal Centre on the day the flight to Rwanda was due to leave before it was cancelled at the 11th hour
More than 7,000 migrants have already crossed the Channel so far this year in small boats, following a record-breaking year in 2023 which saw almost 46,000 making the crossing
They all arrived in Britain illegally between January 2022 and June 2023, with many undertaking the perilous trip across the Channel from France in small boats to reach the UK.
With a new date now set for the next attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, and the first flights fixed to take off in July, Immigration Enforcement agents have begun the task of rounding up the first deportees.
The man charged with overseeing this mammoth task is Eddy Montgomery, the Home Office director of enforcement
The man charged with overseeing this mammoth task is Eddy Montgomery, the Home Office director of enforcement.
The 54-year-old has spent 30 years in the civil service and has been spearheading Britain's frontline operational response to tackling illegal migration for the past decade.
Speaking of the Rwanda operation, he said: 'Our specialist operational teams are highly trained and fully equipped to carry out the necessary enforcement activity at pace and in the safest way possible.
'It is vital that operational detail is kept to a minimum, to protect colleagues involved and those being detained, as well as ensuring we can deliver this large-scale operation as quickly as possible.'
Officials are targeting 2,143 people who they feel can be easily found and that they will have the best chance at catching, detaining and deporting.
These migrants all attend regular face-to-face meetings at enforcement centres as part of their immigration bail conditions, with officials knowing where they are staying and when they will appear for appointments.
The remaining 3,557 people are thought to more challenging to locate.
Asylum seekers following the rules, will be detained by immigration squads during surprise raids while the immigrants are attending their latest meeting at enforcement centres.
However, those already identified, who fail to turn up, will face sterner action from officers.
Asylum seekers are continuing to cross into the UK. Pictured are some attempting the journey from France last week
Last year, there were 67,337 asylum applications to the UK. Of those, 29,437 came from people who arrived in small boats. The Government claims the Rwanda scheme will act as a deterrent, however it only has the capacity to send 200 people a year to the East African country
What will the raids look like when they happen?
Agents, wearing protective body armour, will raid the homes of migrants and arrest them, before taking them away in vans to be transported away to .
Videos from this week showed such a bust, with a team of about six officials filmed arriving at a terraced house and entering through the front door.
In the footage, a female officer is then seen opening an internal door and announcing: 'Immigration.'
A man dressed in dark-checked trousers and a light-coloured hoodie then walks out of the bay-fronted house and steps into the rear of a detention vehicle. A security grille is then locked behind him.
Home Office agents launched a string of raids to detain migrants this week destined to be deported to Rwanda
One official was seen with a handheld battering ram on one of the raids - although it's thought this was not used
One migrant is pictured in handcuffs being taken out of a property by an enforcement officers, in scenes set to replicated elsewhere in the country over the next several weeks
Migrants detained during the operation were locked in the back of a van and taken to one of seven detention centres
In a second sequence, officers arrive at another terraced house and then leave with a bearded young man dressed in black trousers and a black hoodie.
The man walks out of the white-rendered property with his hands handcuffed in front of him, and is placed in a van.
The faces of both men were obscured in the videos and the locations of the detentions have not been disclosed.
It is not known at this stage how many people have been held in total.
However, scenes like these are expected to be repeated across the UK as the Government seeks to round up the first 2,145 people.
Where do the migrants go after they've been detained?
They will be shipped off to seven Immigration Removal Centres (IRC) spread across the UK.
Migrants can be held at the sites for the entire nine to 11 weeks before their scheduled flights - provided there is a
