Chris Gray
speaker
586 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 11 Jun
Chris Gray’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
They then talk about something called Operation Combi, which they describe as a multi-agency crackdown targeting abuse of the common travel area and then point to the arrests that have been made in the last couple of years, 250 organised criminals, as they're described, and immigration offenders involved.
who they say have abused the common travel area.
But that then gets to questions we don't have the answer to.
But Kieran, you were touching on there, which is on what basis did this individual get into the Republic of Ireland?
Then once in the Republic of Ireland, has managed to travel to Northern Ireland.
And from that point on, then sought asylum, was granted refugee status and was given leave to remain until 2028.
And we're told had not kind of crossed the desks of any authorities, not least the police prior to that.
prior to earlier this week.
So there's quite a lot of subtleties and details to unpick, either in this particular case, or indeed you might apply to anyone else, around their precise status in the various places, not least the Republic, that they, if you like, carried at the point that they were there.
And therefore, was there a, you know, did they arrive illegally in the UK, albeit without ever encountering because of the nature of the border,
the kind of thing you would encounter if you were crossing the channel, i.e.
border force, or indeed if you arrived at an airport, i.e.
border force, and then you go through the process of applying for asylum.
And because so much of the UK political debate around illegal immigration and asylum seeking, and they're not always the same thing, of course, but is focused on the channel and that desire, that law passed by the Conservatives to make that crossing illegal, does
Does the same thing apply if you have crossed a border that is effectively, for the sake of this conversation, sort of invisible or doesn't involve, you know, border force and then you apply for asylum and you go through that asylum process in a conventional manner?
in a conventional way.
So I mean, this is, I mean, I think the fact that we're getting to some of this, we're asking these questions, and the government is attempting to offer answers, whilst a lot of the questions, by the way, they don't have answers to, like how many people do claim asylum in Northern Ireland, having arrived from the Republic?
And given all of the things we've discussed on this episode and previous ones about why the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic is as it is, it seems likely, Kieran, as you were saying, that there is a limited amount in practical terms that the UK government or indeed the Irish government would be able to do without changing that border to something that wouldn't be politically sustainable.
No, it wasn't.
We heard from the Prime Minister in front of the cameras for the first time, expressing, as you would expect, his horror at the events of both of the recent evenings, both the initial events.
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