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Home Office

Answer

Mr. Coleman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many failed asylum seekers from (a) Somalia, (b) Afghanistan and (c) Iraq have been deported in each of the last six months. [143858] Beverley Hughes: Deportations are a specific subset of removals alongside persons subject to administrative removal, removal due to illegal entry action or those refused entry at port and subsequently removed. Estimates of the number of nationals of Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq who had sought asylum at some stage and who were removed between January and June 2003 are shown in the table. These figures include persons departing `voluntarily' after the initiation of enforcement action against them, and persons leaving under Assisted Voluntary Returns Programmes run by the International Organization for Migration. Removals and voluntary1 departures of asylum applicants, excluding dependants, of Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, January to June 2003 2,3,4 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. Nationality January February March April May June Total Afghanistan 20 15 30 45 60 40 210 Iraq 20 35 40 45 25 20 175 Somalia * 5 * * 5 5 25 _________________________________________________________________________________________________. 1 Includes persons departing "voluntarily" after enforcement action had been initiated against them, persons leaving under Assisted voluntary return programmes run by the International Organisation for Migration, and removals on safe third country grounds. 2 Figures rounded to the nearest five with * = 1 or 2. 3 Data have been estimated due to data quality issues 4 Provisional figures Information on the nationality of asylum seekers removed from the United Kingdom during the third quarter of 2003 will be published at the end of February 2004 on the Home Office Research Development and Statistics Directorate website at http://www. homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

143858; 416 c7W

Session

2003-04

Subjects

Asylum Applications Deportation Undocumented migrants Iraq Afghanistan Somalia

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk