Given the 1,954-mile length of the U.S.-Mexico border, Americans watching British politicians attempting to govern an island nation may wonder why immigration is such a difficult issue. This week, Parliament approved the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which will allow the government to transfer illegal migrants seeking to enter the United Kingdom to Rwanda instead. Partly this is in order to reduce the costly process of assessing migration claims and accommodating those applicants are successful. But it is also, explicitly, intended to “prevent and deter unlawful migration, and in particular migration by unsafe and illegal routes.”

Essentially, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hopes that those who consider seeking asylum or migrant status in the U.K. will decide against attempting entry because of the risk that they will be deported to Rwanda in central Africa instead. There is no evidence that this deterrent effect exists: as a rule of thumb, a “fact” which has to be asserted in legislation to make it in any way “true” is a dubious fact to begin with.

We know there is no proof of the deterrent effect. Two years ago, when the plan to deport potential migrants to Rwanda was still being drawn up, then-Home Secretary Priti Patel was told by her senior official, Sir Matthew Rycroft, that he could not say with certainty that the policy represented good value for money. He is required to do this as the accounting officer for the Home Office. “Evidence of a deterrent effect,” he wrote, “is highly........

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