A High Court judge has ruled that a prominent migrant hotel, infamous for previously housing a child molesting migrant, will be able to continue to operate as accommodation for alleged asylum seekers, dismissing safety concerns from locals.
Epping’s Bell Hotel, which became the epicentre of a national protest movement against the government scheme of placing mostly unvetted young male illegal migrants in hotels at taxpayer expense, will be free to continue housing asylum seekers, Justice Mould ruled on Tuesday, Sky News reported.
The High Court judge dismissed concerns from the local Epping Forest District Council (EFDC), which had sought an injunction against the Home Office using the site for migrants, a location that local police had decried due to its proximity to schools.
However, Justice Mould said that he was not provided with “evidence-based” analysis demonstrating an increased likelihood of hotel migrants committing crimes at a higher rate than the population, and, therefore, the need for the government to provide accommodation to migrants outweighed local safety concerns.
“The fact that persons accommodated in asylum accommodation… from time to time commit criminal offences or behave antisocially provides no reliable basis for asserting any particular propensity of asylum seekers to engage in criminal or anti-social behaviour,” he said.
“Persons who are members of the settled population also commit crimes and behave antisocially from time to time.”
Statistics on the crimes committed by migrants have long been a guarded secret in Britain, with seekers of such information often being relegated to examining prison rolls and the like. The government has similarly obscured the number of crimes committed by asylum hotel migrants.
However, an investigation carried out by the Mail on Sunday earlier this year, which examined court records in relation to 70 migrant hotels, found that at least 312 hotel asylum seekers had committed at least 708 crimes, including rape, sexual assault, and attacks on police, over the past three years.
The true scope of criminality has yet to be examined, with over 32,000 migrants currently being put up in hotels across the country on the taxpayer’s dime.
The Bell Hotel, in particular, rose to international attention earlier this year after an Ethiopian illegal boat migrant, Hadush Kebatu, sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl while staying in the hotel, an attack that sparked months of local and national protests against the migrant hotel scheme.
The local Epping Forrest council had previously won an injunction to shut down the Bell Hotel as migrant accommodation. Yet, the Home Office overturned the ruling on appeal after successfully arguing that the right of asylum seekers to be housed at taxpayer expense supercedes local concerns.
The Conservative Party’s Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, remarked on Tuesday’s ruling: “This is a dark day for local democracy and a slap in the face to the people of Epping.
“A Labour government has once again put the rights of illegal immigrants above the rights of British citizens. The people of Epping have been silenced in their own town. Their council fought for them, their voices were ignored.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on X: Follow @KurtZindulka or e-mail to: [email protected]
Read the full article here