Tories claim to take back control of our borders while coronavirus travels freely

It turned out all was not entirely as it seemed. The operation was the arrest of two alleged traffickers, accused of conspiring to facilitate illegal immigration.

People smugglers are “Treating innocent lives as a commodity and lining their pockets while people are dying,” Ms Patel is quoted as saying without any apparent sense of irony.

Plenty of those who had been outraged did a quick volte face and expressed relief that the politician was on the side of right. Don't be so sure: successive governments hostile to immigration have helped create a thriving market for those looking to exploit people desperate to reach the UK.

No mention was made of the victims of this type of situation either. No wonder. In January this year Home Office minister Victoria Atkins, the minister for safeguarding, rejected proposals in a parliamentary bill that were designed to provide additional supports for victims of trafficking. The bill, tabled by Tory life peer Ian McColl and co-sponsored by Iain Duncan Smith, asked for trafficking survivors to receive at least 12 months' access to safe housing, support and protection from immigration detention.

Home Secretary Priti Patel during a National Crime Agency operation at address in east London Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

In response, Ms Atkins said, "The government does not agree that victims should automatically be granted leave to remain for 12 months."

Even if you struggle to find empathy for victims and prefer a tough-on-crime approach, poorly supporting vulnerable people and then deporting them is a boon to criminals - you're packing off those who can testify to their crimes.

But if we're looking for a coherent, humane strategy from Boris Johnson's government then we'll be staring at an endless blank horizon.

"Take back control of our borders" was one of the most potent slogans of the pro-Brexit campaign. And yet, when it became vital to do just that, the Tories have spectacularly screwed it.

Last year Ms Patel was having fun deploying RAF jets over the English Channel in response to refugees in rubber dinghies while also flying in fruit pickers from Eastern Europe to Pick For Britain because we'd run out of migrants.

There were reports this week of EU citizens being detained at UK airports and held in detention centres for as long as seven days. They claimed to have been denied medicines, such as blood pressure tablets and contraceptive pills needed to control polycystic ovary syndrome.

Home Secretary Priti Patel during a National Crime Agency operation at address in east London Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

Today, a report from the Independent Monitoring Board details "inhumane treatment" of detainees held in Brook House, near Gatwick Airport. Volunteers engaged to scrutinise conditions in custody, found high levels of self-harm, suicidal ideation and serious delays in assessing torture claims.

These stories are relentless. Every week, fresh outrage at the UK's inhumane immigration system. It feels never ending.

While the Home Office displays relentless confused cruelty, when presented with a genuine, vital need to control the borders, the government failed to do so. Quarantine regulations were eye-poppingly lax. There was a failure to check that people were self-isolating - for the required time, or even at all. The information on how to quarantine was muddled and open to interpretation.

And when overseas holidays were allowed, there was a push for people to travel without any real clarity on safety or caution.

Now we have a travel traffic light system already being hammered by scientists as incomprehensible and picked apart by the opposition as unworkable. Is an airline consortium in about Boris Johnson's personal texts?

Last week hundreds gathered in Glasgow to help block the detention of foreign nationals. My colleague Kirsteen Paterson at The National had a vital follow up story about a second immigration raid on the same morning in the city at the same time local residents in Pollokshields stopped the removal of two of their Indian neighbours, mechanic Lakhvir Singh and chef Sumit Sehdev.

This other raid went under the radar. While the demonstration on Kenmure Street made international headlines, no one saw the van that came for this other man at the emergency accommodation centre he had been placed in. No crowds gathered, no one lay holding the chassis underneath his van because this removal was unseen - as with others that have occurred this year and that will continue to occur.

Home Secretary Priti Patel during a National Crime Agency operation at address in east London Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

As Kirsteen Paterson highlights, on May 4 the UK signed a new deal with India, agreeing to accept 3000 Indian students aged 18 to 30 to live and work in the UK for up to two years, the process of returning visa overstayers will be "swifter and more efficient". The Home Office would not be drawn on whether the two dawn raids against three Indian men in Glasgow were carried out on the same day due to an intention to target Indian nationals as part of this deal.

In the push to publicise friendly ties to India, Boris Johnson waited until the eleventh hour to cancel his scheduled trip to the country. Despite the concerns over the Indian variant, flights from Pakistan and Bangladesh were stopped yet in the three weeks following, 20,000 travellers from India were allowed to arrive in the UK.

Was this lax approach influenced by the immigration deal with India? Was it influenced by a potential trade deal?

We're at another crucial point in lockdown easing. We were here last summer - cinemas opened, the government paid people to eat indoors, foreign travel restarted and folk shot off to sunny climes with a sigh of relief.

Both governments urge personal responsibility, asking for caution in enjoying new found freedoms but if restrictions are eased, however, people will make the most of them - including overseas travel.

It is folly to put any faith in the government to safely manage the borders for holidaymakers and travellers with regards coronavirus. It is glaringly apparent that the notion of taking back control of immigration means unfettered cruelty.

For a government dead set against free movement, the virus has been allowed to wander untrammelled. Humans, though, regardless of need, are treated less leniently.