Explained: Priti Patel’s shelved plan to ship asylum seekers to south Atlantic

Home Office officials asked to look into building migrant centres on Ascension and St Helena

Home Secretary Priti Patel arrives at Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
(Image credit: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Priti Patel asked officials to explore sending asylum seekers to isolated islands 4,000 miles from the UK in the south Atlantic, it has emerged.

The home secretary made the suggestion of transferring migrants to Ascension, an isolated volcanic British territory, and St Helena, which is part of the same island group but 800 miles away.

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Joe Evans is the world news editor at TheWeek.co.uk. He joined the team in 2019 and held roles including deputy news editor and acting news editor before moving into his current position in early 2021. He is a regular panellist on The Week Unwrapped podcast, discussing politics and foreign affairs. 

Before joining The Week, he worked as a freelance journalist covering the UK and Ireland for German newspapers and magazines. A series of features on Brexit and the Irish border got him nominated for the Hostwriter Prize in 2019. Prior to settling down in London, he lived and worked in Cambodia, where he ran communications for a non-governmental organisation and worked as a journalist covering Southeast Asia. He has a master’s degree in journalism from City, University of London, and before that studied English Literature at the University of Manchester.