Murdered Rhiannon Whyte's mum accuses Home Office of gaslighting her - as she condemns Labour's handling of asylum
Siobhan Whyte's daughter was stabbed to death 24 times with a screwdriver by a Sudanese asylum seeker in 2024
The mother of a woman who was murdered by an asylum seeker staying in the hotel where she worked says she has "lost all hope" in the Government's ability to tackle the issue.
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Siobhan Whyte, whose daughter Rhiannon was stabbed to death 24 times with a screwdriver by a Sudanese asylum seeker in 2024, said she was "disgusted" to find out that illegal migrants were not detained on arrival.
It comes after a poll revealed that the majority of Brits, 57%, said they agreed that asylum seekers should be detained while their claim is processed.
Ms Whyte, who is campaigning for Rhiannon's Law, which would bring in stronger checks and electronic tagging of asylum seekers awaiting processing, said she was told during a recent meeting with a Home Office minister that it was against migrants' human rights to keep them detained in barracks.
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She told LBC's Tom Swarbrick at Drive: "I was disgusted because where's our human rights?"
"Where were Rhiannon's human rights that she wasn't able to come home that night?"
Rhiannon Whyte was murdered by Deng Majek, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of 29 years, at the Bescot Stadium railway station in October 2024. She had worked at the hotel he had been housed in while his asylum claim was being processed.
She said the asylum seekers staying at the hotel "did drugs and drink [sic] outside the hotel. I saw it with my own eyes. They were allowed to wander the streets whenever they wanted to."
Ms Whyte said she "came away from the Home Office on Thursday feeling a little bit hopeful because they said that they wanted to work with us for Rhiannon's Law and put things in place.
"Then on Sunday, the boats came into Portsmouth. So I feel like we've totally been gaslit as a family."
It comes after hundreds of protestors descended on Portsmouth to prevent 140 migrants arriving on a boat near the Isle of Wight from being taken to Kent for processing.
The Government has condemned the "intimidating and thuggish behaviour" of protestors on Sunday. A spokesperson said the right to peaceful protest was "fundamental" but that it should "never cross a line into disorder".
Ms Whyte, who attended the protest, said she had "lost all hope" in the Government's ability to seize the issue.
Asked if it was too harsh to detain all migrants on arrival, she told Tom: "We couldn't get into another country without documentation...we would be committing a crime if we tried to get into another country without documentation."
She also hit out at Nigel Farage's response to the anti-migrant protestors in Portsmouth and Dover.
The Reform UK leader has called for a ban on face coverings, which he labelled as a 'menace'.
"Now, I’m all for the protest. Plenty to protest about. But seriously, this is not the way to go about it," he wrote in the Telegraph.
Ms Whyte told Tom: "The reason a lot of these men and women go down in masks is because they have jobs. They don't want to be attacked. They don't want to lose their jobs."