A former Met anti-terror chief has torn into Suella Braverman's "incredibly unhelpful" rhetoric over deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Neil Basu, who served as Assistant Commissioner for Special Operations at the Met Police until last year, warned the Home Secretary to be more careful in public statements.
Ms Braverman previously said it was her "dream" to see a flight containing asylum seekers taking off to Rwanda after the controversial policy was mired in legal challenges.
The first flight to Kigali was grounded in June after an eleventh hour intervention.
“I would love to have a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession,” Ms Braverman told an event at Conservative conference in October.
“[Starting by Christmas] would be amazing but if I’m honest I think it will take longer. We’ve got to come out of the legal dispute we are currently embroiled in.”
But Mr Basu, the UK's most senior police officer of colour, criticised some of the comments coming out of the Home Office.
Asked whether Ms Braverman's comments on the Rwanda policy "feeds into this right wing extreme online world", he said: "I think it's incredibly unhelpful.
"I mean, I'm not sure why the language was chosen other than to be, to look politically tough, but I've said in the past, you know, people with incredibly important positions who have a microphone and a platform need to be incredibly careful about what they say in public."
"And [there is a] lack of a sort of reasonable debate on these issues, which is an incredibly important issue and very worrying for all kinds of sections of society.
"And it needs to be debated. It doesn't need to be shouted down, but some of that rhetoric... by our new Home Secretary has not been helpful in my view."
The Home Secretary is under intense pressure to stem the flow of migrants making the perilous Channel crossing in small boats - an issue that Rishi Sunak has deemed a top priority.
Her second stint in the top job - after she was forced to quit by Liz Truss for sharing official documents on her personal email - was marred by a crisis at the Government's migrant processing centre at Manston in Kent.
Mr Basu blamed the rise of far-right extremism on deindustrialisation and unemployment, alongside tension-stoking rhetoric.
And he argued that Brexit had also helped to fuel far-right views.
"It's not been helpful because I think it unleashed in a lot of people a a sort of xenophobia and a nationalism that clearly feeds into this narrative," he said.
