Shame on you, Home Office

Jackie Smith, the Home Secretary, announced yesterday that the UK would not ‘give any guarentees’ that victims of sex trafficking would not be deported once rescued in the UK.  Bearing in mind that, as an absolute number and as a percentage of total immigration in to the UK, we are talking about a small number of women who have been through terrible abuse and exploitation, why does the Home Secretary feel it necessary to ‘reassure’ the British public that these women will then be sent back to their home countries?  Surely as a country we can agree to protect and care for victims of the modern day slave trade?  Our obligations as a moral state must be extended to non-nationals in this situation, otherwise the very public moralising and self-congratulatory pronouncements about the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade will have counted for nothing.