Clear risks of violating international law and the most basic principles of human rights aside, these plans will do nothing to combat trafficking other exacerbate the issue by creating a never ending cycle of people forced into the hands of traffickers. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/priti-patel-vows-to-combat-plague-of-channel-people-traffickers-v5w5vvt3w

#Refugees have specific legal rights provided by international law in acknowledgment of challenges they face which no-one else does, and that a criminal record should not be a death sentence. It's why criteria for excluding them from safety upon recognition are limited.

Telling people, "it's International law. Deal with it", understandably doesn't help here. Look at it like this therefore, by reducing sentence required before deporting someone, you are essentially placing whether some may live or die in the hands of the magistrates court.

Imagine that it is you. You have lived here for most of your life. You don't know anyone in your country of birth. You have a life here, friends, family, children etc. You make one mistake. Someone kicks off at your partner in a club and you shove them away and they go down.

Suddenly everything is changed. You're sentenced to six months in magistrates court. It's not great, I mean it was a spur of the minute action in a moment of anger after all, but you're lucky. Your boss has said they understand and your job will be waiting for you.

You do your time. You get out. You go back to work. You try and put it behind you. Then one day, and it could be any day even after you are back home, there's a knock at the door. Before you know it you are detained again. You're in immigration detention.

This time you don't know how long for though. It's indefinite. There's Covid running rampant in the facility, but you can't isolate or try and take measures to protect yourself due to the cramped unhygienic conditions. You try and get legal help but you can't get access to any.

Eventually, you are stuck on a flight. Taken to a country you don't know. There's no-one there you can really turn to. You've been abandoned and told you can never see your family again. All for one action in a moment of anger, defending someone you love.

Now imagine you are an asylum seeker and instead of being sent to a country where you don't know anyone, you are sent to one which sends you to a camp where you are tortured and sold into slavery. Welcome to what is happening right now.

Asylum seeker or deportee, what are you going to do next? Do you give up on seeing your family ever again and living in a country where you may not even speak the language? As an asylum seeker, do you resign yourself to a life of slavery and death? Or do you try and escape?

So in steps your only option, the trafficking gangs. You have no money to pay a smuggler up front, so the traffickers are the only ones you can go to, even if it means being exploited and working off the costs. After all, some hope is better than none isn't it?

Once they have you they have you though. You don't end up back in England for starters, but you manage to escape again and, again, you end up with traffickers. Many victims are trafficked multiple times. Finally you are in the UK.

You can escape now though can't you? Where do you go? The police? Back to immigration detention and deportation. Your MP? 151 have reported people to immigration enforcement during the pandemic alone. There's no-one. You're trapped with the traffickers. That's it. Game over.