Seven migrants were meant to be moved to the Bibby Stockholm barge this morning from a hotel in Peckham. Students from the woke School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) weren’t having it. Cue Gen Z protest tools to stop the coach: electric scooters and knives…

James Cleverly has tweeted his anger:

“Housing migrants in hotels costs the British taxpayer millions of pounds every day. We will not allow this small group of students, posing for social media, to deter us from doing what is right for the British public.“

Sky News is providing fawning coverage from the ground in Peckham, insisting “they don’t look like they have their phones out, they are peaceful.” Black Lives Matter UK and Just Stop Oil are now calling for reinforcements to help the students as the police gets involved. The Home Office has previously folded in the face of protests when trying to move migrants to the barge. Does SOAS govern Britain now…

The government has stepped up the pace to get its Rwanda scheme off the ground – and further details are emerging about how the process will actually work. In an updated ‘equality impact assessment’ published on GOV.UK yesterday, the Home Office admits that MPs may be able to block individual deportations:

“It is a long-standing parliamentary convention that MPs’ representations suspend removal until a case has been considered and a response issued to the MP. In practice, representations are responded to swiftly and do not usually delay removal. Given the novel nature of the SORB, we may expect future MEDP cases to attract significant attention from MPs, and responders may be overwhelmed by cases, causing a delay or removal to be cancelled pending a response. The process for responding to MPs’ representations will continue as usual in Op Vector cases, and responders have put in place a process to ensure responses are issues promptly.”

In other words, lefty MPs could kick up such a fuss in the media and gum up the Home Office process that the removals are delayed. Guido wonders whether now would be a good time for parties – such as Labour – to instruct their MPs not to interfere…

This morning the Home Office released data on Entry Clearance Visas awarded in 2023. They’re claiming that the government’s  “plan is working” to reduce migration, pin-pointing that enforced returns were up by two thirds. Don’t trust the spin…

Despite asylum applications decreasing by 17% since 2022, the government granted asylum to a record-high of 62,336 individuals. Centre for Migration Control took a look at the stats, and found that a record 1.395 million people were given visas last year. The number of small boats may be down, though increasing visas awarded sort of cancels that out…

The Times has dug out details of Home Office plans to train up for Rwanda removals. The department has hired an aicraft hanger and fuselage usually used for film production on a one-year contract to practise getting migrants onto planes. Stansted was originally going to be used but pulled out over publicity concerns…

Immigration enforcement officers and personnel from private security firm Mitie are getting trained to bring migrants, one-by-one and accompanied by five officers, onto a plane while avoiding protestors “playing dead” in front of them along with other potential scenarios. The government says it has “a very detailed operational plan to exercise and practice all manoeuvres that are needed to remove people” and that they have “to pre-empt a situation where an individual may claim they were manhandled so you need proper space to remove people from their detained facility and have a highly detailed and organised boarding pattern“. Judging by the progress of the bill they’ll have plenty of time to get trained up…

Home Secretary Suella Braverman is hardly mincing her words on the pro-Palestine marches in London over the weekend:

‘We’ve seen now tens of thousands of people take to the streets following the massacre of Jewish people… chanting for the erasure of Israel from the map. To my mind there’s only one way to describe those marches. They are hate marches… the police must take a zero-tolerance approach to antisemitism…”

While Braverman said she wouldn’t get into a “running commentary” on the work of the police given their “operational independence”, she nonetheless claimed she would “not hesitate” to change the law “if there is a need”…

Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick has confirmed asylum seekers will finally start moving out of their taxpayer-funded hotel rooms in the coming days, with the first of 50 hotels closed shortly. The whole process will last until January…

Jenrick told the House:

“Ever since the Prime Minister, Home Secretary and I assumed office one year ago, we have been clear that this was completely unacceptable and must end as soon as practicable… The first 50 of these exits will begin in the coming days and will be complete by the end of January. But we will not stop there. As we continue to deliver on our strategy to stop the boats, we will be able to exit more hotels.”

The hotel bill for the 50,000 migrants is costing the taxpayer a whopping £8 million a day…