![]() And that figure, as pointed out by The Mirror, is up by 10,000 since December, when Rishi Sunak announced he planned to bring an end to illegal migration. ![]() The government has said they want numbers up to 50 and then onto its full capacity of 500, yet this is still a mere 1% of the 50,546 asylum seekers currently in hotels. Meanwhile, on Monday the first 15 migrants boarded the Bibby Stockholm barge. In 2020, a member of the island’s council said the plans would prove a “logistical nightmare” and had been received poorly by residents. Locals will also oppose any move to revive a scheme first suggested by Priti Patel. He said: “You’ve got to send out Portakabin residences for your builders, then you’ve got builders who have to live there while they’re doing the building, then you have to build the premises for the migrants to live in, then you’ve got to persuade people that they want to go and live on Ascension Island for long periods to run the centre.” A Cabinet minister when Ascension Island was first ruled out, he said on his GB News show that it was “impossibly expensive”, costing a vast £1 million per migrant. Jacob Rees-Mogg has also shared his reservations about the plans. The US is said to be deeply concerned about the prospect of migrant flights to and from a base which provides vital radar functions for rocket launches and is also the location of one of six GPS monitoring sites for the RAF. Currently, the only way to access the remote volcanic island is on an RAF flight with a 15-seat capacity and one Whitehall source told the paper: “The RAF will want nothing to do with it.” They added that since the RAF is legally responsible for anyone setting foot on one of their aircraft it is unlikely that they would take migrant flights on, “especially when these people will be unwilling to go”. The only airfield on the island is one jointly operated by the Royal Air Force and the US Space Force, meaning plans to charter private or commercial flights to and from there have been rejected. The Times is reporting that any plans to site migrants to the strategically important island will be resisted by both the Ministry of Defence and the United States. The airfield is jointly operated by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Space Force (USSF). When asked why a policy deemed unviable by the government only two years again was being revisited, Home Office minister Sarah Dines told Times Radio, “times change”.īut thankfully, facts do not change. RAF Ascension Island ( IATA: ASI, ICAO: FHAW ), also known as Wideawake Airfield or Ascension Island Auxiliary Field, is a military airfield and facility located on Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. But problems with the Ascension Island idea soon emerged – like the fact that it had been mooted, and ruled out, as a processing centre for migrants in 2021. RAF Ascension Island (IATA: ASI, ICAO: FHAW), also known as Wideawake Airfield or Ascension Island Auxiliary Field, is a military airfield and facility.
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