A career criminal who was deported to Romania and banned from the UK only to be arrested on almost the same spot in London just weeks later.
Ionut Stoica was arrested for illegal gambling on the bridge and breaching a deportation order banning him from the UK. After being prosecuted he was deported back to Romania again in September.
However, Stoica snuck back into Britain again, having been caught loitering on Westminster Bridge last Friday, just yards from where he was arrested around 10 weeks earlier, reports MailOnline.
One Conservative MP said that the case showed how Labour is failing to get a grip on who is coming in and out of the UK. They said: “This man is now taking the p**s. How on earth does he keep getting in?”
Ionut Stoica snuck back into Britain
PA/Met Police
A Met Police spokesman said: “In the summer we arrested this young chap who was involved in illegal gambling on the bridge. He was also arrested for breaching a deportation order banning him from the UK. He was removed from the UK in September.
“We received information that he may well have made a reappearance in the UK. This information proved to be correct when he was spotted by an officer who was heading into the office, who promptly arrested him for breaching a deportation order again.”
Stoica has pleaded guilty to another breach of his deportation order in court and was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison, followed by immediate deportation to Romania when released.
One commentator said on social media the case suggested the UK has a “revolving door.”
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Keir Starmer held a press conference in Downing Street earlier this week
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It comes after the Prime Minister announced a major overhaul of the immigration system as he accused the Conservatives of running “a one-nation experiment in open borders”.
On the day revised figures estimated net migration hit a record 906,000 in 2023, Sir Keir Starmer told a Downing Street press conference that his Government would publish plans “imminently”, in the form of a white paper, to bring down the number of people entering the UK.
But he also took aim at the previous government, saying the quadrupling of net migration since 2019 had been a deliberate policy of the Conservatives.
He said: “Failure on this scale isn’t just bad luck. It isn’t a global trend or taking your eye off the ball. No, this is a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose, to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”
Meanwhile, the number of enforced returns of people who do not have a right to stay in the UK has risen to the highest level in nearly six years.
Some 2,061 enforced returns took place in July to September 2024, up 12 per cent on the previous quarter and a jump of 29 per cent on the same period in 2023.
It is the highest quarterly total since October to December 2018, when the figure was 2,087, according to Home Office data published on Thursday.
The latest figure covers the period that saw Labour’s landslide General Election win on July 4.