How Trump's Alligator Alcatraz tactic has sent migrant numbers PLUMMETING – while soft-touch UK rolls out the red carpet

The Sun

2 days ago

COMPARE and contrast the images.
At the heart of London's ­financial centre, comfy mattresses are loaded into a four-star hotel as they prepare for hundreds of special new guests.
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No, not well-off tourists here to inject some much-needed cash into the UK's struggling economy, but the ­latest batch of small boat migrants who have illegally landed, ready to be hosted in style to the tune of £5.5million a day.
Meanwhile, 5,000 miles away on an abandoned airport in the bug-ridden and croc-infested Florida Everglades, up to 3,000 illegal migrants are banged up in what Donald Trump calls ' Alligator Alcatraz'.
'The only way out is a one-way flight,' declared the White House when they opened the brutal ­detention centre, where high-security cages sleep 30 at a time in a swamp-like hellhole.
It's been designed for one purpose only: deterring illegal migration.
Labour scrapped the only proper deterrent on the table, in a clear ­signal to those queuing at Calais to carry on crossing with impunity.
Harry Cole
While Britain rolls out the red ­carpet for our soaring number of uninvited guests, since January ­America has seen a comparative ­border miracle.
Crossing attempts on the southern border have plummeted, and those that do make it are rapidly deported.
With President Donald Trump landing at Prestwick in Scotland last night before inspecting his golf courses Turnberry and Menie, Sir Keir Starmer will be dropping in for a chat on Monday to talk trade and world peace.
But instead, he should bring his notebook and pen and start with a very simple question . . .
How has America got a grip of its border crisis, while impotent Britain is humiliated by a daily stream of fresh boats, migrant rapes and assaults, and more tinder box ­communities on the edge?
Migrants REFUSING to leave luxury taxpayer-funded hotels forcing Home Office crackdown
Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has embarked on a slew of aggressive and eye-catching immigration clampdowns.
From the off, both on the Mexico border and deep into the country's biggest cities, it was made clear there's a new sheriff in town.
On the very day Trump was sworn back into the White House, he declared a national emergency, ­classifying the tens of thousands of monthly arrivals coming through Mexico as an 'invasion'.
New sheriff in town
Opposition parties have been demanding a similar escalation here in the UK, but so far that has fallen on deaf ears in Downing Street.
Rhetoric aside, the US move unlocked millions of dollars of ­military budget funding to dramatically increase patrols on the border.
More than 7,000 troops were sent to the Southern states, with federal agents around the wider country given sweeping immigration powers to detain illegal migrants.
After construction of Trump's 'big beautiful wall' was paused by his predecessor Joe Biden, work immediately began again in January, serving as a visual deterrent if nothing else.
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And more significantly, the White House reintroduced rules that non-Mexican asylum seekers must wait in Mexico rather than be allowed to enter the US while their claims are processed.
Another Biden-era policy which allowed migrants to use a mobile app to schedule asylum appointments pre-arrival was also scrapped, leaving 30,000 claimants in the lurch.
As the new arrivals were squeezed, those already here were ­ruthlessly targeted, and deportations have been rapidly hiked.
Undocumented migrants can now be removed from anywhere in the US without so much as a hearing.
While the US government's ­methods are not for the squeamish, they have clearly been effective.
Harry Cole
Previously, that strict measure was reserved only for those detained within 100 miles of the border.
Compare that to the tens of ­thousands in the UK put up while their bogus asylum claims, funded by taxpayer legal aid, exhaust appeal after appeal.
Turning again to the military, the US air force has gone into deportation overdrive, shipping out thousands of migrants, with more than 1,000 flown out in the first week of the new administration alone.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement have arrested more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants in 2025, with a heavy emphasis on those convicted of crime.
In the first 50 days of Trump's ­second presidency, the administration claimed that 32,809 arrests were made, nearly matching the number detained in the entirety of Biden's last year in office.
And the highly visual deterrent measures did not stop there.
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While Starmer scrapped the Rwanda scheme as his first action in office, the United States has ­convinced ­Guatemala, Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador to take ­deportees, even if they are not their own citizens.
Talks with 30 other countries are ongoing, helping the White House to claim that 139,000 immigrants had been deported by April of this year.
And did it work? The latest ­numbers say yes. There were just 7,181 crossings or attempted crossings from Mexico in March, compared to 143,000 in the same month last year.
June 2025 saw the lowest number of attempts or crossings in 25 years at just 6,070.
And, crucially, all ­apprehended migrants were either detained or deported, with zero 'releases' into the community.
Just contrast that with Britain.
In a single day in May, 1,194 migrants landed on the coast of Kent.
Billions more spent
In Labour's first six months in office, there was a 29 per cent increase in arrivals compared to the previous year.
From election day to the end of 2024, 23,242 migrants arrived to enjoy bed and board on the taxpayer.
In 2025 — so far — another 21,117 have crossed, up a staggering 56 per cent compared to 2024 and a shocking 75 per cent higher than in 2023.
For a new administration that vowed to 'smash the gangs', it's an abject humiliation and comprehensive failure, on course to smash only unwanted records.
Excuses range from sunny days to the lazy French not playing ball, but given Starmer's first act as PM and no replacement for Rwanda yet, the blame game rings hollow.
Labour scrapped the only proper deterrent on the table, in a clear ­signal to those queuing at Calais to carry on crossing with impunity.
Add to that the lure of Britain's black market, where new arrivals can go from dock to takeaway delivery driver in a matter of hours, and it becomes a national joke.
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According to the last available UK figures, there are some 118,000 ­asylum seekers awaiting decisions, with the hotel bill steady at £5.5million every day.
Labour made a big song and dance about the 4,390 deportations in their first six months in office, yet 2,580 were foreign national offenders rather than small boat arrivals.
Official Home Office figures have been less forthcoming since then.
But with 95 per cent of arrivals attempting to claim asylum, without a dramatic hike in ­deportations this problem is not going to go away.
Despite a Labour manifesto ­commitment to 'end asylum hotels, saving the taxpayer billions of pounds', that target has been kicked into 2029, meaning billions more will be spent until at least the end of the decade.
And compare 'Alligator Alcatraz' to how soft-touch Britain pampers those in the asylum queue.
This week, we learnt pre-charged debit cards handed to migrants have been used in 6,537 attempts to gamble in bookies or casinos.
Illegal black market
There are more than 80,000 of these pre-loaded 'Aspen' cards in circulation, topped up every ­Monday by the Home Office with up to £49 a week for guests using self-catering ­accommodation.
They are meant to give weekly payments so users can buy necessities.
In Wandsworth, South West ­London, where Labour won control of the council last year for the first time in decades, those living in limbo are given perks not available to locals but paid for by locals.
While awaiting asylum decisions, new arrivals are given subsidised travel on pay–as-you-go electric bikes at half the normal rate.
There's half-price soft play for those that actually brought children, but not much use to the thousands of single men that make up the majority of crossings.
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And there's even cut-price tickets for literature festivals, local fireworks displays and — I'm not ­making this up — half-price annual fishing permits to cast off at the local ponds.
The French call our asylum ­system El Dorado, the city of gold, and frankly they have a point.
While Donald Trump is doing everything he can to deter migrants, we are handing out freebies, four-star hotel suites and turning all but a blind eye to ­illegal black-market work.
While the US government's ­methods are not for the squeamish, they have clearly been effective.
Sir Keir warned his Cabinet this week that the very social fabric of Britain is starting to fray and social disorder is a major risk among a population that feels ignored on immigration.
Well, surely then it's time to get real and take some uncomfortable measures?
Yes, Trump is not bound by foreign courts, but he took on his own legal system on many immigration measures and won — something Sir Keir should look into if he really is as worried as he claims about the impact of unfettered crossings and community breakdown.
The PM could learn a thing or two from the President, if he's ­serious.