Hundreds of asylum seekers are escaping deportation because of incompetence by the Government's shambolic immigration department, it has emerged.

Leaked e-mails reveal removals of many of the 400,000 bogus refugees living in the UK are being halted because staff lose their passports and travel documents.

It forces the cancellation of their flights home at the last minute - even though it has cost £11,000 to round them up and detain them prior to deportation.

It is one of the main reasons why almost a third of removals have to be halted at the eleventh hour, it has emerged.

Set free

They have to be either put back into detention centres while the documents are found, or set free.

The blunders are costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.

A series of e-mails from an exasperated immigration official, seen by the Dail Mail, lay bare the incompetence at the processing centre for removals from Heathrow Airport, in London.

One, titled 'disappearing files', warns Tony Blair's promise to increase the number of removals is being put in peril by lost documentation.

The civil servant writes: "Due to the increasing amount of files that are being removed from the Detention hold, preset Removal directions have had to be reset and more are in danger of being cancelled".

Another, entitled ‘Matter of urgency’, and sent to all other enforcement centre staff, orders a hunt for missing documents. It pleads: "Confirmation of this is urgently needed by the reporting centre."

Without the documents, there is no way of sending failed asylum seekers home. Countries are only obliged to take bogus claimants if the UK has proof of their nationality.

Leaked e-mails

The e-mails, leaked by an angry immigration officer, are backed by a snapshot of the removal success rate at Heathrow.

Of 1,591 people brought to the centre in a single month, there were 450 last-minute failures.

In 95 cases the reasons were recorded as documentation problems - such as no ticket, no travel document, wrong name on ticket, wrong destination or removal directions sent in error.

In a further 139 cases, staff did not even bother to record the reason for the deportation being halted. Many of these are believed to involve lost passports or other paperwork.

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