Met wants more foreign criminals in London deported
The Metropolitan Police is planning to send twice as many files on suspected foreign criminals to immigration tribunals.
Scotland Yard currently sends between 30 and 50 offenders' files a week but plans to increase that to about 100.
Of about 260,000 suspects arrested in London each year, 70,000 are foreign nationals - about 28%, the Met said.
It set up Operation Nexus with the UK Border Agency in September to tackle the problem.
The Met said the project had been a success so far, BBC London News Home Affairs correspondent Guy Smith said.
Met Commander Steve Rodhouse said since the unit was established they had arrested 40 rapists in London who are foreign nationals.
In one case, a 46-year-old Jamaican man, who had been charged with a string of sexual offences but never convicted, has since been forcibly removed from the UK under immigration legislation.
Lincoln Farquharson, previously resident in Lewisham, south-east London, had been charged with multiple rapes and was removed from the UK on 26 May.
In November 2011 he was referred to the Operation Nexus pilot after being arrested for rape.
During the offence he was alleged to have threatened his alleged victim with a gun.
The subsequent investigation revealed the same man had been charged with four previous rapes of different victims in London but the cases had failed to secure any convictions, the Met said.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "Analysis of these crimes identified that this man carefully selected victims who were vulnerable due to their lifestyle and/or mental capacity.
"His choice of victim enabled him to evade justice and allowed him to continue to subject young women to the most vile of sexual assaults."
He is now prohibited from returning to the UK for at least 10 years.
Mr Justice Blake, the lead judge on the immigration circuit, said: "We are entirely satisfied that his past treatment of women strongly supports an assessment that he presents a real risk of future harm to women."
Det Supt Stuart Dark, MPS Operation Nexus lead, said: "This case highlights the invaluable contribution made by immigration legislation and the immigration courts in the fight against serious crime."