Since June 2022, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has prosecuted over a thousand people seeking asylum in the UK for the offence of ‘illegal arrival’, which was introduced by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. This article provides a short update of the position as of July 2026, including on how the newly introduced offence of ‘endangering life at sea’ has been used since its introduction in January 2026.
Further detail and testimonies regarding the criminalisation of those seeking sanctuary in the UK can be found in two reports documenting this trend: No Such Thing as Justice Here (February 2024), and I Told Them the Truth (May 2025).
How many people, and who, are being prosecuted?
The offence of ‘illegal arrival’ was introduced in the 2022 Act in response to cases in which people steering dinghies across the Channel were acquitted of ‘illegal entry’ (and facilitation of that entry) on account of the distinction between ‘entry’ and ‘arrival’ in the context of asylum claims.
From 28 June 2022, people arriving in the UK without authorisation began to be arrested for ‘illegal arrival’ (section 24(D1) of the Immigration Act 1971, as amended by the 2022 Act). As of 30 January 2026, 1,099 people have been convicted of this offence. Data for the first half of 2026 is expected in August.
The breadth of the offence of illegal arrival provides the state with the de facto power to arrest anyone arriving without authorisation that it wishes to target. However, not everyone arriving irregularly is prosecuted; it is therefore important to look at who is selected for prosecution in practice.
Just over half of those prosecuted for ‘illegal arrival’ during this period arrived on a ‘small boat’ (628 people). Others have been selected after arriving in lorries, cars, by plane, or by yacht.
Around half of those selected for prosecution after arriving by small boat were identified as steering small boats across the Channel (332 people). Some of these people are also charged with the more serious offence of facilitation (section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971) in addition to illegal arrival; however, in most cases the facilitation charge is dropped following a ‘not guilty’ plea given the higher evidential threshold and lack of evidence that ‘pilots’ were involved in organising the crossings. Despite this, the Home Office and National Crime Agency continue to cast boat pilots as the ‘evil people smugglers’ behind Channel crossings in their press releases and social media posts.
We have observed that most people steer boats across the Channel in return for a reduced fare they could not otherwise afford. Some are forced to steer the boat by smugglers, sometimes at gunpoint. Others took turns to steer to avoid exhaustion or took over when the original pilot became tired or ill. Freedom of information requests show certain nationalities – particularly Sudanese and South Sudanese – are over-represented among those prosecuted.
The other main reason why people are selected for prosecution having arrived by small boat is having a ‘previous immigration history’ in the UK. This is a broad category, extending even to those who have simply previously applied for a visa, but who had never been physically present in the UK.
We have also identified a small number of cases where the individual prosecuted was neither a pilot nor did they have a ‘previous immigration history’, but which further highlight the politically motivated, and often arbitrary, nature of these prosecutions.
These examples include two men who were convicted in September 2023, where the aggravating factor was that they had been identified trying to protect the dinghy from police destruction on the beaches in Calais. Last year, in March 2025, a Palestinian man was charged after his social media posts resulted in him being the target of a campaign by right-wing media and the Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, who wrote to the Home Office calling for his immediate deportation. We have also begun to identify people charged with illegal arrival when arrested in-country for other offences, if they had arrived on a small boat in previous years.
Arrival and prosecution
The vast majority, if not all, of those charged and convicted after arriving in the UK on a small boat have made asylum claims in the UK. Those prosecuted also include victims of trafficking, torture, and at least 31 age-disputed children.
Most of those prosecuted are arrested from Manston in the hours following their arrival in the UK and claim asylum, and are then taken to a Kent police station. They usually appear before the Folkestone or Margate magistrates’ court around 48 hours after their arrival in the UK. Recent freedom of information data confirms, however, that some people are arrested much later on, sometimes over a year after crossing, and their cases are dealt with in courts and prisons outside Kent, making it harder for support organisations to identify them.
The vast majority of defendants who are tried for illegal arrival in the magistrates’ court plead guilty. Guilty pleas are generally advised by criminal solicitors as informal sentencing remarks from Recorder Judge James, who sits in Canterbury, have placed the starting point for sentences to be given by judges in pilot cases without aggravating factors as 12 months. Pleading guilty early in the proceedings generally results in a sentencing reduction that means avoiding this 12-month threshold, which is also the threshold for potential exclusion from refugee status. In practice, most prosecutions for illegal arrival of boat pilots have resulted in sentences of eight or nine months, with those with a ‘previous immigration history’ usually receiving 12 months or higher.
It is important to note, however, that these prison sentences are lower than the previous and current governments had hoped for, likely due to the fact they have been unable to successfully prosecute many small boat pilots with the more serious offence of facilitation. This is due to the general lack of evidence that these individuals had any involvement in organising the journeys.
New offences for 2026
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in December 2025, introduced several new offences, including criminalising the supply or handling of items or information suspected for use in organised immigration crime. The CPS has confirmed that such information ‘can include looking at weather reports or tide times to identify a favourable time to launch’; the basic information required to improve the safety of a crossing.
We are particularly concerned about the use of the new offence of endangering life at sea which came into force with these other offences on 5 January 2026. The offence can only be charged as an attachment to illegal arrival and was introduced to increase the sentences of those identified as steering small boats. As with illegal arrival, the CPS guidance on the use of ‘endangerment’ is intentionally very broad, and they have declined to provide a fixed list of those acts that might constitute the offence.
The CPS has, however, begun routinely charging pilots with this new offence.
In June 2026, Mohammed Tajik from Afghanistan and Alnour Ali from Sudan became the first people to be sentenced for endangering life, receiving 27 months and two years respectively. Both had been identified as steering a small boat for part of their crossings, had sought asylum on arrival, and had pleaded guilty. The prosecution cited the overcrowding of both dinghies and the defendants’ supposed recklessness, while accepting that neither had any prior involvement in organising the journeys.
Mohammed, it seems, was charged because he let go of the tiller as a Border Force boat approached. It is unclear why Alnour was charged at all, beyond a National Crime Agency press release wrongly accusing him of responsibility for four deaths in French shallow waters earlier that day, a connection the prosecution and judge accepted at sentencing had never been established.
At sentencing, Judge James acknowledged he was ‘unaware of any empirical evidence or research’ that prosecutions deter Channel crossings. He nonetheless deviated from the guidance provided by the Court of Appeal in R v Ginar [2023] EWCA Crim 1121, by sentencing with the intention to deter and setting a starting point of three years imprisonment.
The evidence regarding deterrence in fact points the other way: it is government policies that are increasing risk to life in the Channel. Research by the University of Bristol and Border Forensics has shown how British-funded border security measures have made crossings more dangerous. Confiscating motors has left fewer working dinghies and fuelled overcrowding, while violent British-funded French policing tactics have caused panics, crushes, and drownings in shallow waters.
The introduction of this new criminal offence, and its higher sentencing, marks a concerning escalation in the imprisonment of refugees for how they arrive in the UK and the scapegoating of those seeking sanctuary rather than looking at the harms produced by border policies themselves.
This is especially concerning given that those targeted for prosecution are often the most vulnerable. By way of example, the first person to be charged under the new offence of endangering life at sea on the first day of its implementation was subsequently found by the National Age Assessment Board to be only 16 years old. Shockingly, the CPS has continued with the prosecution notwithstanding this finding.
Organisations working on this issue
There is a small group of organisations working hard on this issue:
- Captain Support UK provides direct material and social support to people imprisoned for immigration-related offences.
- Refugee Legal Support provides post-release casework support and can assist with asylum accommodation and legal representation for people convicted of immigration offences.
- Humans for Rights Network specialises in casework for age-disputed children charged with these offences.
We are always happy to hear from people who have been charged with or convicted of offences who would like our support or from lawyers with ideas for further legal challenges which could be brought to these prosecutions.
This article was co-authored with Emily Soothill and Francesca Parkes.