Top lawyer tears into 'utterly absurd' sentencing of migrant who threatened to kill Nigel Farage: 'No power to deport him!'

Khan, a small boat migrant from Afghanistan, threatened the Reform UK leader in October last year in a TikTok video.

On his "MadaPasa" account, Khan pointed towards his face tattoo of an AK-47 and claimed he was going to "pop, pop, pop" Mr Farage, referring to him as "Englishman Nigel".

Delivering his verdict on the sentence, Mr Haigh told GB News: "For once, I'm pleasantly surprised with the sentence from the judge. I actually thought it would be around the one year mark, and we would be having a debate over whether or not the 12-month duty to deport actually was in place.

"So clearly anything over 12 months, the Home Secretary is under a duty to deport them, unless there are human rights arguments where they must stay."

Highlighting the "key problem" as to why Khan cannot be deported, he added: "The problem that we've got with this chap is that regardless of what he said, that he wants to go back, he will come out after about 18 months. Now, how do we deport him?

"If we look at the practicalities, if he's from Afghanistan, we are not able to because there's no returns agreement. So if we're not able to do that, despite the fact he says at this stage he wants to go, Nigel Farage is correct in thinking that he could be living on a street around the corner from him in 18 months."

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Expressing his outrage at the "failure of the state" in being unable to deport such criminals, GB News host Martin Daubney fumed: "This case exemplifies and crystallises everything that's wrong about our broken asylum system, about our neutered, impotent ability to deport people to so-called hostile states.

"He wants to go back to Afghanistan, for God's sake, he actually wants to go back, and yet we were the ones that would be unable to do that. In 18 months time, he could be wandering around the street and guess what, the British taxpayer will no doubt be tucking this guy up in a free hotel or a free HMO. It's an astonishing failure of state."

Mr Haigh agreed: "It's utterly absurd, the fact that someone is here, they've committed a very serious offence against one of our politicians, potentially inciting other people to do that.

"And even if they want to go back, because of the practicalities and the law that we have at the moment, it's all very well the Home Office is saying they'll do everything in their power, they don't have the power to actually send that person back to a country where there's no returns agreement. They cannot do it."

Offering a possible solution, Mr Haigh claimed that Khan could potentially "voluntarily return" to Afghanistan once he is released.

Mr Haigh concluded: "He's stuck here and he can't stay in prison, so he will effectively be released onto the streets, that's the only way around it. Unless he voluntarily, terribly, once he's released onto the street, gets on a plane himself and goes back.

"Of course, that's one way, but that's not a process where we can force him to do that. The minute there's some form of force, then the human rights laws come into play and there's the problem. So like I said, in 18 months, this chap will be on the streets in England, and he wanted to go home."

In a statement, a Home Office spokesman said: "We welcome this sentence. Threatening violence against anyone, particularly an elected member of Parliament, is never acceptable.

"We thank the police and all those involved in bringing justice in this case. When foreign nationals commit serious crimes in our country, we will always do everything in our power to deport them."