Who is surprised by this? She’s xenophobic and racist. This is the same “Law and Order” nonsense as in the USA. Look at who is the primary target of this legislation to get an idea of her real intentions.
Suella Braverman has said people who enter the UK illegally after crossing the Channel on small boats “possess values which are at odds with our country” as well as “heightened levels of criminality”.[1][2]
She’s not wrong that the people coming over likely do have values which are at odds with hers and those in power: these people are coming over to better their lives, which is something those in power absolutely do not have as a goal.
Last year, the UK agreed to send tens of thousands of people more than 4,000 miles (6,400km) away to Rwanda as part of a 120-million-pound ($146m) deal.[3]
Mind you, she’s also a hypocrite who definitely understands what she’s doing:
In her maiden speech, she recalled how her father, Christie Fernandes, had fled tensions in Kenya to seek a new life in the UK. “On a cold February morning in 1968, a young man, not yet 21, stepped off a plane at Heathrow airport, nervously folding away his one-way ticket from Kenya. He had no family, no friends and was clutching only his most valuable possession, his British passport. His homeland was in political turmoil,” she said.[4]
How can you believe that her actions here are for the greater good, when she repeatedly proves she’s not able to do good things? How can you not believe that this is yet another angle in her policy push that disproportionately hurts the already disadvantaged.
These sorts of quasi-legal police stops are already used to enforce “pre-crime”: simply being caught with rope, or spray paint, or various other items is in itself enough to be detained and questioned for an extended period of time, if not charged. These are violations of rights, plain and simple, and yet instead of correcting them, people like Braverman are pushing to make them more defensible within the existing legal framework.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/26/suella-braverman-small-boat-arrivals-have-values-at-odds-with-our-country ↩︎
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/25/braverman-bill-could-lead-to-3000-asylum-seekers-being-deported-a-month ↩︎
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/18/uk-interior-minister-to-visit-rwanda-to-discuss-migration-partner ↩︎
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/06/suella-braverman-home-secretary-set-to-take-even-harder-line-on-migration ↩︎