Exclusive: Albanian criminal twice deported from Britain boasts on social media about his return to the UK

A prolific Albanian burglar twice deported from the UK for his crimes has sneaked back into Britain as an illegal immigrant - and posted Instagram pictures of his high life drinking cocktails and driving a Porsche.

His flagrant breaches of immigration controls are to be investigated by the Home Office following a series of damaging deportation rows where the Government has struggled to remove foreign nationals.

Doran Puka, 26, was originally jailed for nine months in 2016 and then deported the following year for attempting to break into a property when the owner spotted him on a webcam while on holiday in France.

Yet, within a year, he managed to evade border controls and return to the UK where he carried out a string of burglaries in suburban London.

Puka was eventually caught wearing an expensive watch he had stolen when he was spotted by plain clothes officers patrolling Surbiton in south west London after the increase in burglaries locally. He was jailed for three and a half years and then deported in March 2020.

During his time in prison in the UK, he earned notoriety for using an illegal mobile phone smuggled into the jail to post Instagram pictures of himself standing alongside the leader of an organised crime group who was serving a 12-year sentence for conspiracy to supply cocaine and money laundering.

After returning to his native Albania for several months, he travelled through Germany, Belgium and Netherlands before beating border checks to enter Britain again in December 2020, according to his Instagram account.

Pictures posted on Instagram last month show him in the London commuter suburb of Richmond, Surrey, wearing a Covid mask and standing next to a £70,000 Porsche estate car on Christmas Eve:

Others include videos of Christmas Day celebrations with a turkey, Jack Daniels, liqueurs and cocktails in crystal glasses with a twist of lemon, as well as film of a training session in north London involving an Albanian amateur boxer.

A Home Office spokesman said the information had been passed to Border Force and police with a view to tracking him down and deporting him again.

The disclosure follows a series of deportation scandals where attempts to fly foreign national criminals back to their home countries have been disrupted or blocked by legal challenges over human rights and even claims of modern slavery.

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) last year said the Home Office had no idea how many illegal immigrants were in the UK, noting its last official estimate of 430,000 was 15 years old. A former head of immigration enforcement, David Wood, has put it at closer to one million.

The NAO also said the Home Office was deporting fewer illegal immigrants largely due to successful legal challenges. At the same time the number of attempts by migrants to secretly enter the UK and detected by the Border Force rose by 12 per cent to 46,900 in the year to October 2019.

The Home Office spokesman said: “Foreign criminals who violate our laws and abuse our hospitality have no place in the UK. Knowingly entering the UK without leave is a criminal offence and anyone who has committed such an offence should be prepared to face prosecution and removal.

“We continue to strengthen our borders to stop people reaching the UK through illegally-facilitated routes, and we have established the Clandestine Threat Command to better coordinate Government and law enforcement agencies to stop people coming to the UK who have no right to be here.”

Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, will shortly unveil a Sovereign Borders Bill aimed at increasing deportations and tightening Britain’s “broken” asylum system by constricting the grounds on which it can be claimed and shortening the time for appeals.