Last night in his nationally televised annual State of the Union address, President Trump threw down the gauntlet: “The first duty of the United States Government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Yesterday at the White House, he hosted grieving families in the White House for a ceremony that marked 22 February as National Angel Family Day.
The event honoured a terrible toll: Americans killed by crimes committed by illegal immigrants. Trump signed a proclamation, named victims and embraced mothers like Tammy Nobles, whose daughter, Kayla, was strangled in 2022 by an undocumented MS-13 gang member from El Salvador
The scene was straightforward: a government head acknowledging heartbreaking loss, committing to deportations, and pushing legislation like the Kayla Hamilton Act.
That bill aims to tighten background checks, gang-affiliation screening, and sponsor verification for unaccompanied migrant children – measures designed to prevent exactly the kind of tragedy that befell Kayla, a vulnerable autistic 20-year-old.
Across the Atlantic, Britain's own record of institutional failure in protecting the vulnerable offers a stark parallel – and a glaring absence.
For years, thousands of girls were groomed, raped, and trafficked by organised groups in towns across Britain. The perpetrators were often men of Pakistani heritage operating in networks that exploited girls from broken homes or care systems. Authorities repeatedly ignored warnings, suppressed evidence, or hesitated over fears of racism accusations.
Starmer, who as CPS Director of Public Prosecutions oversaw some of the earliest successful prosecutions in these cases, became prime minister, promising change.
In June 2025, he announced a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs in England and Wales, following the Casey audit that criticised the avoidance of ethnicity data. He pledged the inquiry would examine offenders' ethnicity and religion, and insisted "injustice will have no place to hide.”
By October 2025—eight months later—survivors on the Victims and Survivors Liaison Panel resigned, with at least four (including Fiona Goddard and Ellie-Ann Reynolds) citing condescension, political interference, a toxic environment, and concerns over diluting the focus on grooming gangs.
Reports confirm survivors felt sidelined, with one publicly noting no response to a meeting request with Starmer and concluding he "doesn't care", alongside complaints of being kept in the dark and treated with contempt.
While Starmer has defended the inquiry in Parliament and backed ministers like Jess Phillips, he has not convened survivors or families in any equivalent public, personal setting.
Donald Trump just humiliated Keir Starmer over the rape gangs with one simple yet powerful act - Lee CohenReform's Nigel Farage has pushed hard for a grooming gangs crackdown, pledging mandatory whole-life sentences for child rapists in January 2026 and urging Parliament to replace the stalled government inquiry with a faster, transparent cross-party select committee, while criticising authorities for denying the problem's full scale.
Meanwhile, Rupert Lowe, now leading Restore Britain, has crowdfunded over £600,000 for his own Rape Gang Inquiry, which held hearings in early February 2026 to gather survivor testimonies, uncovered evidence of overseas trafficking by perpetrators, and is pursuing private prosecutions against enablers — filling the gap left by faltering official efforts.
The Government’s pattern continues in more recent cases. In October 2024, Rhiannon Whyte, a 27-year-old hotel worker and mother of a young son, was stalked from the Park Inn Hotel in Walsall – where she worked and where her killer was housed as an asylum claimant – and stabbed 23 times with a screwdriver at a deserted railway station. The perpetrator was convicted in October 2025 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The victim's mother has since held the prime minister responsible, arguing that decisive action on unvetted arrivals could have prevented such an attack.
Yet there has been no widely reported meeting of the Prime Minister with victims or families in a setting that matches the gravity of their loss.
Contrast that with Trump's approach. He did not delegate to panels or audits alone; he brought families into the White House, gave them the floor, and used the moment to reinforce policy.
The ceremony was not theatrical – it was deliberate recognition that victims and their relatives are the primary stakeholders, not bureaucrats or activists.
Government failures – whether historic grooming networks or recent preventable killings tied to migration lapses - represent a betrayal that demands similar direct accountability.
These were not isolated crimes but patterns enabled by institutional caution and misplaced priorities. Families watched daughters and loved ones destroyed while police, councils, and government hesitated.
Survivors and bereaved relatives have fought for years to force recognition, only to encounter managerial responses that sidestep personal engagement.
The question is not whether Starmer has launched reviews, issued statements, or overseen prosecutions – he has. It is why he has not matched the basic decency of sitting down face-to-face with those most affected, hearing their accounts unfiltered by officials, and demonstrating that their pain registers at the highest level.
If the inquiry is serious about restoring trust, or if the government truly values victims over optics, personal outreach from the prime minister would be the clearest signal. Instead, requests for meetings go unanswered.
The small boats crossings continue, straining communities and raising the same vetting questions that failed in the United States under Biden.
Trump's approach exposed a simpler truth: leaders who claim to value victims should meet them, name the problem without euphemism, and act accordingly.