Migrants seek redress for ‘immense distress’ from deportations now thrown into chaos by election announcement

Asylum seekers detained by the Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election.

The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector.

The government’s safety of Rwanda bill finally passed into law in April. But, with the announcement last week of a general election, the Conservative ‘dream’ of deportation flights taking off might never happen. So what has the bill achieved? And what does it mean for those it has targeted? The Guardian’s John Harris hears what life is really like for migrants in the UK

Exclusive: Johnston Busingye formally appointed days after UK agreed Rwanda asylum deal with Paul Kagame in 2022

Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK oversaw the use of the international justice system to target opponents of the country’s rulers around the world, the Guardian can reveal.

New details of the Rwandan government’s suppression of opposition beyond its borders add to concerns about the regime at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s asylum policy.

Asylum seekers from Sudan, Eritrea and Afghanistan detained in government’s Operation Vector share their stories

When Helen arrived at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre, she was taken to her cell and handed some cleaning spray and wipes and told to use them before making up her bed. She had no idea why she had been arrested when she went to report.

“They told me I had been detained for Rwanda and tried to convince us to go voluntarily saying it is now the law and we have already been selected. But they didn’t explain to me why I had been chosen.”

Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have all provided object lessons in how not to govern wisely or well

And so, at last and unlamented, the 2019 parliament will finally be laid to rest on Friday. This parliament’s prorogation is not shamelessly illegal, as Boris Johnson’s lawless attempt to end its predecessor was five years ago. But that is just about all that can be said in its favour. In almost every respect, this has been as shoddy and as discreditable a period as British government has had to endure. There can rarely have been a parliament that comes to its end as unmourned as this one.

Yet the 2019 parliament is dying as it lived, amid needless chaos and with political desperation once again taking precedence over legislative substance. Rishi Sunak’s gamble on a July election means that most of the government’s programme, which was announced in the king’s speech in November, will now never reach the statute book at all. This underscores a very troubling truth: that modern government is becoming more performative than effective, with MPs increasingly expected to campaign rather than to scrutinise or legislate.

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Assertion that flights will not begin until after 4 July poll prompts despair from Tories on right of party

Rishi Sunak has said deportation flights to Rwanda will not leave before the general election, prompting ridicule from Keir Starmer and despair from Tories on the right of the party.

Under the £500m scheme, which is the cornerstone of his government’s promise to “stop the boats”, flights would not start landing in Kigali until “after the election”, the prime minister said.

Bills, including smoking ban for people born after 2009, unlikely to become law before 4 July vote

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Rishi Sunak is now speaking at an event in Ilkeston in Derbyshire. It is in the Erewash constituency, where the Tory MP Maggie Throup had a majority of 10,606 at the last election.

He repeats the claim that a Labour government would cost every family £2,000.

Labour’s spending promises cost £16 billion per year in 2028-29, or £58.9 billion over the next four years.

But their revenue raisers would only collect £6.2 billion per year in 2028-29, or £20.4 billion over the next four years.

I don’t really think the arrangements in Scotland for the school holidays have really been anywhere near the calculations made by the prime minister …

I think it would be respectful if that was the case but it’s pretty typical of the lack of respect shown to Scotland that we’re an afterthought from the Westminster establishment and particularly the Conservative establishment.

Hundreds of protesters prevented an attempt to collect asylum seekers from a south London hotel and transfer them to the Bibby Stockholm barge. The Guardian witnessed crowds blocking the bus and the road outside the Best Western hotel in Peckham before police were able to move in and break up the protest. The bus eventually left the area after seven hours, with no asylum seekers onboard

London protesters block transfer of asylum seekers to Bibby Stockholm