Foreign criminals will be banned from entering the UK or have their visas cancelled as part of Shabana Mahmood’s migration crackdown.The Home Secretary will tomorrow unveil new rules to exclude foreign offenders who have received a suspended sentence of at least 12 months.Ms Mahmood’s crackdown will impact foreign criminals irrespective of whether the offence was committed at home or abroad. It will also ban foreign arrivals regardless of when the crime took place.
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Ms Mahmood said: “Coming to the UK from overseas is a privilege, not a right. Any foreign national with a history of crime and violence is not welcome.“If you pose a risk to our country, you will be refused entry or removed.”The Home Secretary will set out her wider migration plan in a keynote speech at the IPPR think tank tomorrow.However, Ms Mahmood last year confirmed the Home Office was implementing a new power to facilitate the immediate deportation of convicted foreign criminals, reducing the time frame from 30 per cent into a jail term. The changes, which will come into force from March 26, will bring immigration rules in line with reforms in the Sentencing Act 2026.However, Ms Mahmood has been looking to introduce a drastic overhaul of Britain’s migration rules since entering the Home Office last September.Earlier this week, GB News revealed that Ms Mahmood had ended a “stalling tactic” used by failed asylum seekers to speed up the deportation of illegal migrants in the UK.The Home Office now believes the changes will reduce the time needed to less than an hour.LATEST DEVELOPMENTSShabana Mahmood bins appeals from failed asylum seekers who lodge late claims before abscondingUK student visas suspended for four countries after mass asylum fraud exposedMigration policy from Labour could hurt UK economic growth, shocking OBR report warns“Britain will always provide refuge to people fleeing war and persecution,” Ms Mahmood added.“But we will have no tolerance for those who seek to game the system by making unlimited human rights claims as a stalling tactic to frustrate their removal.“We will change the rules to scale up the removal and deportation of those that have no right to be here.”However, Ms Mahmood’s push to crack down on foreign criminals is unlikely to address Britain’s burgeoning prison population.The Home Secretary, who previously served as Justice Secretary, faces a challenge when it comes to deporting foreign nationals banged up in British prisons.There were 10,722 foreign nationals in prisons in England and Wales in June 2025, representing around 12.3 per cent of the total prison population. Foreign inmates have even cited articles included in the European Convention on Human Rights to avoid deportation. It was revealed last year that foreign criminals were costing the taxpayer an eye-watering £643million a year to prosecute and detain in prison.The figure is equivalent to the salaries of 15,000 new police officers.Despite facing legal challenges, the Home Office does retain the power to deport foreign inmates who have been sentenced to 12 months or more in prison.Ms Mahmood is now looking to rejig the UK’s interpretation of the ECHR, including by narrowing down “family connection” to parents and their children.She also intends to reset “the public interest” test so the default becomes a removal or refusal and tighten where human rights claims can be heard.However, Reform UK and the Tories have put pressure on Labour to leave the ECHR to take back control of Britain’s borders.
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