Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many illegal immigrants have been apprehended while entering the UK in each of the 12 months from September (a) 2018 and (b) 2019.

To maintain the highest standards of accuracy, the Home Office prefers to refer to published data, as this has been subject to rigorous quality assurance under National Statistics protocols prior to publication.

Information about enforcement operations is not available in our published data.

Our published data is available at the following links:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-enforcement-data-august-2020

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2020

Details on the number of people who have crossed the Channel in small boats between January 2018 and June 2020 was published, via a letter from the Home Secretary to the Home Affairs Select Committee, in September 2020.

The information is available at: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/2333/documents/22962/default/