Stories like Ibrahima Bah’s are easily lost in the sea of injustice facing asylum seekers in the UK. This is a country where refugee families are warehoused in run-down hotels for months at a time; where unaccompanied children are deemed to be adults and left living on the streets; and far-right riots are stoked by politicians content to blur the boundary between the desperate and the criminal. Migrants are hauled from the icy waters of the English Channel or stagger onto shore at Dover only to be placed in detention centres where they are mistreated and abused. Those are the fortunate ones; increasingly, they are sent to prison.
That’s where Bah has been, ever since he was rescued from a dinghy that sank while attempting to reach the UK in December 2022. At least four people died. Because he had been the person piloting the boat, Bah was arrested and charged with facilitating illegal arrival. Later, the CPS determined that he should also be held responsible for the lives lost. In February, I sat in Canterbury Crown Court and watched as this young asylum seeker (Bah’s age is disputed and he may have been a child at the time of the crossing) was successfully convicted of manslaughter. He was sentenced—as an adult—to nine and a half years and, soon after, largely forgotten about. On Wednesday there was a chance that he might be noticed again—that this injustice could be reconsidered. Bah’s legal team sought permission to appeal. It was denied.
It is a chilling outcome, one that shows the robustness of a prosecution that never should have come to pass. Ever since the small boats “crisis” began, in 2018, successive home secretaries have sought to equate refugees with invaders, asylum seekers with illegality. A policy of prosecuting those on small boats has been reinforced by the Nationalities and Borders Act (2022) and the Illegal Migration Act (2023), which have made it an offence to arrive by irregular means—even if you intend to claim asylum—and increased the sentences available to five years for simply being on a boat, and life imprisonment for steering one. In this context, Bah was always, most likely, going to jail. The pursuit of a manslaughter charge, the first of its kind in the UK, was uniquely cruel.
Just like Mr Justice Johnson, who oversaw Bah’s trial, the three appeal court judges agreed that “the primary responsibility for the overall offending lay with the traffickers”. Indeed, Bah did not organise the crossing, select the boat, take thousands of pounds from the passengers, nor steer it in a dangerous manner—in fact, according to some passengers, his decisions that fateful night saved lives. Yet it was upheld that “the applicant persisted in the conduct which arose in the context of other serious criminality and demonstrated a clear disregard for the high risk of death”.
Bah’s legal counsel hoped for the sentence, at least, to be reduced, and to take greater consideration of his age and other mitigation. The Lady Chief Justice, Lady Carr, deemed all grounds to appeal not arguable. Messaging me from Senegal after the outcome, Bah’s sister, Hassanatou, described her younger brother as “a victim”. Before Bah ended up in an English prison he had been on an arduous journey in which he was held captive by gangs in Libya. By his account he was beaten and threatened by armed smugglers at Dunkirk; when the dinghy ultimately sank he watched his friend drown. Hassanatou said that she hopes the British government will understand the “pain of my family”, yet right now, without a significant change in legislation or policy, it is doubtful that Bah will be released for many years to come.
There is little sign this shift will come under Labour. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper continues to skirt difficult questions about the small boats crisis, which remains a lightning rod issue. Her party may have abolished plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and house asylum seekers on the Bibby Stockholm barge, but it is yet to repeal the Illegal Migration Act (making some amendments instead), or the Nationalities and Borders Act, and the legal landscape facing asylum seekers remains much the same. Rather than re-centre asylum policy around human rights—and respect for international law—the emphasis has been on border security and policing. Keir Starmer has pledged £75m more funding to Border Security Command in the next two years, doubling its budget.
When asked if Labour believed Bah’s imprisonment would stop the smuggling gangs, and if it intended to continue with a policy of prosecuting asylum seekers based on their mode of arrival, a Home Office spokesperson told me: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security,” adding that it would “stop at nothing” to dismantle the business model of people-smuggling gangs and bring them to justice. It mirrored the statement delivered by the Home Office earlier this year, when Bah was found guilty. “The only people who profit from these illegal, dangerous journeys are criminal gangs,” it posted on social media, along with a mugshot of Bah below the words: “jailed”. Yet no one who had profited from the journey had been prosecuted, just a desperate teenager.
And it is precisely the criminalisation of asylum seekers that fuels the people smuggling trade, making it a necessary evil for desperate refugees. It also makes it more dangerous. Increased policing may have reduced the number of boats, but the number of people on each has risen substantially—from an average of 10 in 2018, to more than 50 in recent years—as smugglers seek to maintain their profit margins at the expense of safety. If Labour was serious about saving lives and making the business of small boats unprofitable, it could establish more safe routes to claim asylum and allow people to do so at the UK border in France. The UK has already established a safe route for refugees from Ukraine—accepting 213,000 people in two years alone. That’s 66,000 more than the total number of people who have arrived by small boat since the “crisis” started. The capability is there, and certainly the capacity, so why not the will? Answers can be found in the racist rhetoric of the far right, who continue to hold sway in British politics. But if Labour wants to play tough, it is setting itself up to fail as miserably as the Conservatives did.
That’s because there is little evidence to suggest that deterrent policies are effective in slowing migration. While new anti-migrant policies are implemented, with novel strategies to smash, break, or disrupt, crossings continue and deaths increase; a dark punchline to each decree. This year is no different. Nearly 34,000 people have crossed the Channel by small boat in 2024 and 54 people have drowned—a new record. Many others have died by other causes trying to attempt the same journey. All of these deaths, the International Organization for Migration stated, are preventable.
The real tragedy is that it is only when these asylum seekers are spotted by one of the drones that now crisscross the coastline, or are picked up by police or coastguard, hoping that their lives have been saved, that they realise the fate that awaits them in the English courts. Spend time in a courtroom like Canterbury or Winchester, and you will see migrants pleading guilty to their own misfortune before being shuffled into cells, with little understanding of why any of this is happening. Victoria Taylor, a researcher at Oxford University who focuses on border policing, has found that in the first half of 2024, 64 people who arrived on small boats were charged with “illegal arrival” and sent to prison. There have been 464 such cases since 2022. Almost all of those convicted had ongoing asylum claims and many, Taylor found, are victims of torture or human trafficking, or are children with ongoing age disputes.
Bah’s conviction is exceptional, but—along with hundreds of other jailed small boat passengers and pilots—it shows how an ideological lust for punishment has trumped our obligation to the rights of refugees. Without safe routes it is inevitable that another tragedy like the one that befell Bah will occur in English waters. When it does, we can be sure that it is the victims who will be punished. And when that happens, remember, this is not an aberration: it is the justice system working exactly how it is intended.
