Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many refugees they have deported from Afghanistan due to failed UK asylum applications.

Enforced returns to Afghanistan, including deportations, remain paused at this time.

The Home Office publishes data on the number of returns from the UK in the ‘Immigration Statistics Quarterly release’. The latest data on asylum-related returns from the UK for the top 10 nationalities, which are broken down by return type including enforced returns (of which ‘deportations’ is a subset) can be found in table Ret_04 of the returns summary tables.

The data are for the top 10 nationalities of the returnee as opposed to destination of the return. The published data therefore relate to all returns of Afghan nationals, including returns to other safe countries. Data by destination are not currently available. The latest data relate to the year ending June 2021 with Afghanistan in the top 10 nationalities.

Asylum-related returns relate to cases where there has been an asylum claim at some stage prior to the return. This will include asylum seekers whose asylum claims have been refused, and who have exhausted any rights of appeal, those returned under third country provisions, as well as those granted asylum/protection, but removed for other reasons (such as criminality).

The term 'deportations' refers to a legally defined subset of returns, which are enforced either following a criminal conviction, or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is conducive to the public good. The published statistics refer to enforced returns which include deportations, as well as cases where a person has breached UK immigration laws and those removed under other administrative and illegal entry powers that have declined to leave voluntarily. Figures on deportations, which are a subset of enforced returns, are not separately available.

The Home Office seeks to return people who do not have any legal right to stay in the UK, which includes people who:

• enter, or attempt to enter, the UK illegally (including people entering clandestinely and by means of deception on entry);
• overstay their period of legal right to remain in the UK;
• breach their conditions of leave;
• are subject to deportation action; for example, due to a serious criminal conviction and;
• have been refused asylum.