Ministers plan biggest deportation exercise ever attempted on one day by sending 300 illegal migrants home - with charter flights bound for Iraqi Kurdistan, Albania and Bangladesh 

By Sue Reid for the Daily Mail 00:59 28 May 2022, updated 14:12 29 May 2022

• The carefully planned Home Office operation involves numerous charter flights
• Those set to be deported are being held at removal centres including Colnbrook
• Each received a letter from the Home Office giving details of their flight
• The Daily Mail understands deportees include Iraqi-Kurds and Albanian nationals

Ministers are planning a mass deportation next week of foreign criminals and migrants who are in the UK illegally.

The carefully choreographed operation, involving up to 300 foreign nationals, is believed to be the biggest deportation exercise ever attempted on one day.

Charter flights booked by the Home Office are bound for Iraqi Kurdistan, Albania and Bangladesh on Tuesday.

Those being deported are being held at immigration removal centres including Colnbrook, near Heathrow Airport, as they await the flights.

They have been rounded up from all over Britain by immigration enforcement officers and detained over the past month.

Each received a Home Office letter last weekend while in detention, giving details of their flight. The deportations will include the first ‘returns’ flight to the turbulent area of Iraqi Kurdistan in a decade, immigration lawyers say.

It comes after the Nationality and Borders Bill became law last month, allowing easier removal of those living in the UK illegally because they are visa overstayers, failed asylum seekers or criminals sentenced to more than a year in prison.

Earlier this month, killers, rapists and paedophiles were among those who dodged deportation to Jamaica with a series of last-minute legal challenges – and just seven boarded the plane. Last night, the Home Office said: ‘We make no apology for removing foreign criminals and those with no right to be in the UK. This is what the public rightly expects.’ It comes after the Government made a separate deal to send certain asylum seekers to Rwanda.

While the department refused to comment on the details of Tuesday’s flights, the Daily Mail understands the deportees include Iraqi-Kurds, Albanians and Bangladeshi nationals.

They will be flown, respectively, to their country’s capital cities: Erbil in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Tirana and Dhaka. The New Arab, a media outlet based in London, reported that Iraqi-Kurd politician Arian Taugozi said the operation followed a ‘secret deal’ between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Home Office.

The ministry said a visit by the KRG’s prime minister Masrour Barzani last month was to ‘strengthen joint efforts to address migration challenges’.