Donald Trump’s border chief has exposed the main flaw in Britain’s border policy, writes Lee Cohen

Donald Trump’s border chief has exposed the main flaw in Britain’s border policy US political commentator Lee Cohen has reacted to GB News's discussion with President Trump's border tsar Sign up to the Opinion Newsletter I agree to receive updates and information about my account, the GB News Community, and related products and services from GB News. Email address Sign up By signing up you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy and Community Rules.

Thank you for signing up! See the latest from GB News here . Choose GB News on Google - add us as a preferred source Choose GB News Support GB News Champion free speech and independent journalism while unlocking exclusive benefits. Support us Tom Homan has no time for euphemism. Donald Trump’s border chief sat down with Tom Harwood for an exclusive interview on GB News this week and warned that Britain will “never have a secure border” while family-life claims keep illegal arrivals on British soil.

Then, plainer still: “Just have a child and you’re immune. Law means nothing, you get to stay forever.” Ministers will wince. They ought to take notes. Homan was describing a problem of sovereignty. He told Harwood the administration faces “over 100 nationwide injunctions” and “over 80,000 habeas cases” in which judges ordered people freed. American judges fight the White House every week. TRENDING Stories Videos Your Say Yet every one of those fights ends in Washington.

In Trump v CASA in June 2025 the Supreme Court curbed district judges freezing presidential policy nationwide. Homan’s verdict: “we have a better Supreme Court.” The last ruling on America’s border belongs to nine American justices. Britain has posted its last word abroad. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees respect for “private and family life”, and the Human Rights Act 1998 wrote that guarantee into British law.

British courts must “take into account” what the European Court of Human Rights decides, and Article 46 commits Britain to obey that court’s final judgments in its own cases. That court belongs to the Council of Europe, sits in Strasbourg and survived Brexit untouched. No British voter can remove one of its judges. Consider Klevis Disha. He came to Britain illegally in 2001, an unaccompanied minor, received a two-year sentence in 2017 for holding about £250,000 of cash from crime, and was stripped of British citizenship in 2021.

Earlier this year a British tribunal, applying the family-life test that the Human Rights Act imported from the Convention, ruled that deporting him would be “unduly harsh” on his son, an 11-year-old British boy whose court papers recorded his refusal to eat foreign chicken nuggets. The boy’s difficulties are real. His lawyers set out serious sensory and behavioural needs, and the judge found Britain is the only country he knows. A law that lets any child outweigh a parent’s crimes, however, turns a family into a shield.

Homan’s reply: “having a US citizen child does not make you immune from our laws.” In America the offender goes home and the family decides whether the children follow. Britain lets a tribunal weigh a boy against the border, and this time the border lost. No Strasbourg judge touched the case. None needed to. Tom Homan has issued a stark warning to Britain, arguing that the UK may 'never' fix its border crisis | GB NEWS Strasbourg reaches further.

On 14 June 2022 one of its judges issued a last-minute injunction, known as a Rule 39 order, and Britain’s first Rwanda flight never took off. This month a committee of MPs considered an order amending the Human Rights Act itself, because Strasbourg had found against Britain in 2021. The minister, Sarah Sackman, told them: “We are obliged, as a matter of international law, to implement this judgment.” The Commons approved it the following night.

The mother of parliaments now takes dictation. For an American, this is a strange sight. My country inherited its faith in the common law from England. We argue bitterly about our judges, yet few of us would tolerate a foreign bench overruling them. Labour will point to the boats, and the fall is real. By the end of September crossings were 42 per cent down on the same point in 2025, BBC figures show. Numbers rise and fall with the weather, the smugglers and French goodwill.

The law decides what happens once a dinghy lands, and that law still answers to Strasbourg. LATEST DEVELOPMENTS Israel’s election won’t change the fundamentals of war and peace in the Middle East — Paul Lewis A whopping £1.75 a month in supermarket savings? Don't insult us, Chancellor – Emma Woolf Taxpayers could be left footing the bill after John Healey’s growth gamble warns Valentin Boboc That goodwill has run dry anyway. The “one in, one out” returns deal with Paris lapsed on 1 October after roughly 1,500 people had been sent back.

Le Monde reported that Andy Burnham urged Emmanuel Macron to keep it going, and that Paris wanted out fast. Burnham’s remedy is to give Europe a bigger say. Ahead of his Brussels summit on 20 November, he said in a Sunday Times interview that he wants an “honest discussion” about bringing back free movement with the EU. On ITV he blamed Brexit for “weaker control now”. Downing Street insists he is proposing nothing yet. Nigel Farage called it a “total betrayal”, while Zia Yusuf of Reform used one word: “insanity”.

In 2016 Britons voted to take back control. A prime minister who laments weak control and then offers Brussels the keys has misread the referendum and the man from Washington. The fix is a British one. Parliament should give British judges, with the UK Supreme Court at the top, the final word on who stays, whatever Strasbourg says. If that means leaving the Convention, as the Conservatives and Reform have both pledged, so be it. America’s border arguments end across the road from Congress.

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