‘Tories are left in blunderland as migrants vanish’

When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean,” said Humpty Dumpty scornfully in Alice in Wonderland. And that’s precisely where we are with the Home Office and The Case of the Missing Migrants. More than half the 5,700 asylum seekers identified for deportation to Rwanda are now missing, having failed to turn up for regular meetings with officials.

But in Whitehall-speak, they haven’t absconded. They simply “cannot be located” which is what I say when I lose my stick. A drive to detain illegal migrants is now under way, with more than 800 immigration enforcement officers tasked with tracking them down. Some of the easiest to catch were detained this week.

The Home Office won’t say how many, claiming that could undermine Operation Vector, as the exercise is named. Disclosure of how few they pulled in might also make them look feeble. And not all of the detainees will be on the first flight to Kigali – whenever that is.

They could be released back into the community if a judge decides they have a strong case for fighting removal. One unidentified African migrant has already flown voluntarily to Rwanda with £3,000 taxpayers’ money in his pocket. Let’s hope he doesn’t spend it on a smuggler’s return ticket.

Labour – struggling to answer Rishi Sunak’s taunt “Well, what would you do?” – reportedly plans to permit 90,000 migrants already here to claim asylum, in concert with seeking return deals with other countries. The move would create a 1,000-strong unit to speed up decisions on boat people, hundreds of whom cross the Channel every week. The plan sounds a bit vague and optimistic, but anything would be better than the Alice in Wonderland we have today.