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UK Taxpayers (Unknowingly) Funding Free Hijabs For Illegal Immigrants

Tyler Durden's Photo
by Tyler Durden
Authored...

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The British government has been handing out thousands of hijabs to illegal migrants washing up on the shores of the country in boats, while Home Office staff have been spending time in Calais cooking meals for them.

Internal figures show 974 hijabs issued to small-boat arrivals between January and June, at a rate of 162 a month. Run that rate forward and the year's total is already past 1,000 and heading for 1,500.

The same clothing data also proves that the vast majority of those arriving are fighting age males, with more than 10,000 male packs being provided against 2,670 for women, while children's packs number just 773 for boys and 829 for girls.

This isn't a deterrent, it's an open armed welcome.

Home Office documents show the scarves are part of the dry-clothing pack issued at short-term holding sites such as Manston in Kent. A Home Office source told the Mail the department has a legal duty, under the Short-term Holding Facility Rules, to provide basic clothing, including cultural and religious items, and that migrants' cultural and religious needs "must be catered for so far as is practicable."

A spokesman added: "All arrivals receive a basic dry clothing pack where required. The items available form part of standard welfare arrangements."

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp told the Mail: "The Government must stop handing out hijabs to illegal immigrants immediately. It's an insult to hard-working British taxpayers that they're funding religious items for people who have broken into our country. It should not be for us to fund someone else's religious practices."

He went on: "Many illegal immigrants actually hate our values. Many come here for free accommodation and a life on benefits at our expense. Illegal immigrants crossing the channel are breaking into our country. They have no legitimate reason to flee France, which is clearly safe. That's why we must leave the European Convention on Human Rights so we can deport all illegal immigrants immediately upon arrival."

Reform UK MP Andrew Rosindell told GB News: "I don't know why we should be giving these people anything. They're coming in illegally, and if they're coming in illegally, we shouldn't be incentivising people by making them feel like they're getting everything given to them on a plate. You couldn't make it up."

GB News presenter Ben Leo put the same point in plainer language: "Don't act surprised when Britain no longer looks like the Britain you grew up in." His argument was that the country has to stop looking like it "comes with a welcome pack."

Campaigning journalist David Atherton also asked the question, "what is the Home Office doing in promoting a backward practice that suppresses women?"

Nearly 20,000 people have reached Britain by dinghy this year alone. The Home Office is keen to note that is down 42 per cent on the same point in 2025, and that summer 2026 produced the fewest summer arrivals since 2020.

A spokesman said: "We have made progress tackling the small boats. Crossings are down significantly." GB News reported that Sunday morning alone had already put more than 200 arrivals into Dover, with close to 500 since Friday, and a further dinghy heading north from a beach near Cherbourg, part of a westward shift in launch points away from Dunkirk and Calais. A bit lower than last year's chaos is not the same thing as a border.

The hijab figures landed on the same weekend as a Telegraph investigation into who, inside the system, is spending their spare time on the French side of the water.

Around eight members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, including Home Office staff, spent two days in February at a migrant camp in Calais with Care4Calais. They cooked meals and handed out fleeces. The trip was organised by PCS, which has worked with the charity since about 2022, including joint opposition to the Rwanda plan.

Full-time union officials on the visit included general secretary Fran Heathcote and Mike Jones, group secretary for Home Office members. Among the Home Office contingent were Passport Office worker and union representative Karen Alderson, Keith Hannant and Jordan David.

Alderson said: "It's important that we have a presence here. A lot of our members work in asylum and the way we hear it reported in the media, it's all about numbers [but these are] people." Hannant said: "And then you come and see [Calais], and they're just people like you and me." David said they talk about the asylum situation in meetings "but none of us have that real hands-on experience of what it's like to work with refugees."

Care4Calais's Charlotte Khan was open about the point of the relationship: "We have people who work in the Home Office." Jones's remedy was not removal. It was "proper plans that can deal with the safe crossing to make sure that people can come to the country safely."

A PCS spokesman said the visit was so representatives "working within the Home Office, including those representing PCS members working in the asylum and immigration system," could "gain a better understanding of the realities facing refugees." The Home Office, asked about its own staff, said only that it expected "all employees to meet the highest standards expected of them."

The charity is not a neutral soup kitchen in this story. A separate Telegraph investigation found Care4Calais had backed asylum seekers disputing official age assessments, including a Sudanese man in his 20s placed in children's accommodation after the charity referred him to a council. Immigration courts later rejected the claim.

Home Office figures for the year ending March show 6,255 age-dispute cases closed, with 43 per cent found to be adults despite claiming to be children. The charity's response was that "the real scandal" was children wrongly judged to be adults, and that it is "a humanitarian charity that distributes aid to people who have fled war, torture and persecution."

Home Office figures put small-boat arrivals since Labour took office on 4 July 2024 at 83,279.

That figure is more than the regular British Army of about 83,000. Since records began in December 2018 the cumulative total is past 200,000, larger than the Army, Navy and RAF combined. About 90 per cent have been male. Two-thirds have been aged 18 to 39.

Meanwhile, this weekend Kent Police ran what Assistant Chief Constable Nigel Brookes called a "substantial" operation around a planned anti-migrant protest in Dover, after masked demonstrators previously blocked the port on 5 September. A face-covering ban was in force from 8am to 9pm under the Crime and Policing Act 2026. Protesters who reached the port were dispersed under a Section 14 notice. Processing of arrivals has repeatedly been linked to the cruise terminal.

Accounts on the ground went further. UK Dispatch reported that Kent Police had put signal blockers near the cruise terminal to stop people live-streaming.

A state that issues religious clothing to illegal arrivals, sends its own immigration staff to volunteer with NGOs on the beach, and polices the cameras at the terminal is not failing to stop the boats.

It is managing the intake, dressing it, and telling the public the numbers are down. France is a safe country. The dinghies are still launching from Normandy. The welcome pack is still waiting at Manston.

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