Sudan tops the league table of sex offence arrests by nationality, ‘disturbing’ analysis suggests.

Data laying bare the scale of such alleged crimes by foreigners in England and Wales places Afghanistan second.

Eritrea, Iran and Iraq rounded out the top five, out of a total of 155 named countries.

Police made 8,500 arrests of foreign nationals for sexual offences including rape in 2024 and start of 2025.

More than 220 came from Sudan, according to figures obtained exclusively by MailOnline.

Latest Government statistics, from the 2021 Census, say only 18,650 Sudanese-born people without British citizenship live here.

This equates to a rate of around 1,200 arrests per 100,000 of the African country’s migrant population.

Because the supplied data only looks at arrests, it does not mean they were all convicted. Suspects may have also been nicked multiple times.

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If Sudan’s rate was applied to the home-born population in England and Wales, it would equate to approximately 500,000 arrests.

Yet cops only nicked 44,000 people for sexual offences across all nationalities in the year to April 2024.

Huge gaps in the available data on the contentious topic of migrant crime means the real figures may be very different. Immigration has spiralled to all-time highs over the past few years and thousands have arrived on small boats.

Chris Philp MP, shadow home secretary, said of MailOnline’s investigation: ‘These figures are deeply troubling.

‘It is disturbing to see so many horrific crimes perpetrated by foreign offenders but also so many gaps in available data.

‘The first duty of any government is to keep its citizens safe.

‘Labour must heed our calls to deport all foreign criminals at once.’

Robert Bates, from the Centre of Migration Control think tank, added: ‘Police forces are clearly recording this data.

‘This is hugely important information, which could be used to greatly improve the manner in which our immigration system works.

Homeless Sudanese national Fawzi Omar (pictured) was jailed for four years after he sexually assaulted a woman in Exeter city centre last May

Homeless Sudanese national Fawzi Omar (pictured) was jailed for four years after he sexually assaulted a woman in Exeter city centre last May

‘But a political choice has been made by officials to try and ignore the evidence.’

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said: ‘Not only is mass migration making us poorer, but this data proves it’s also making us dramatically less safe.

‘Not only do we need to reduce overall migration radically, we also need to overhaul security vetting.’

He added: ‘It should not be surprising that migrants from cultures with backward attitudes towards women are more likely to commit sexual crimes here in the UK.

‘If we are serious about tackling violence against women and girls, we need an immigration system that takes that into account and puts the safety of the British people first.’

Homeless Sudanese national Fawzi Omar was jailed for four years after he sexually assaulted a woman in Exeter city centre last May.

The 27-year-old, who was also given a further four years on extended licence, approached the victim, grabbed her and sexually assaulted her as she was walking home in the early hours of the morning.

Another Sudanese national’s sexual assaults sparked a newspaper to warn locals about his predatory behaviour, with the bold headline: ‘This man keeps sexually assaulting women’.

In January, Ali Hamad was jailed for eight months after being found guilty of assaulting ‘two lone females’ who were walking home after a night out in Cardiff.

He touched one’s bare shoulder and slapped the other in the face three times.

The assaults happened just a fortnight after he was sentenced to a 12-week jail term for masturbating on a busy London street and reaching through the seats of a bus to touch an off-duty female police officer’s bum.

The Sudanese national, whose age sparked confusion in court, was described as ‘fairly rootless, with no job or relatives’ by a lawyer.

In January, Ali Hamad (pictured) was jailed for eight months after being found guilty of assaulting ¿two lone females¿ who were walking home after a night out in Cardiff

In January, Ali Hamad (pictured) was jailed for eight months after being found guilty of assaulting ‘two lone females’ who were walking home after a night out in Cardiff

MailOnline calculated the league table using Freedom of Information (FOI) data from the 43 police forces in England and Wales.

Greater Manchester Police, Warwickshire Police, Northamptonshire Police and Dyfed-Powys Police did not provide data.

Our probe covered all of 2024, although some forces gave figures for parts of January and February 2025.

It solely looked at sexual offence arrests, which might also include child grooming.

Forces did not explicitly state how they determined whether the arrested were foreign nationals.

The FOI data was then plotted against the 2021 Census, which asked respondents about their country of birth and nationality.

We only took into account those without British citizenship or a passport, and did not include dual British citizens.

Only countries with at least 10 arrests were included.

A handful of countries had no population data to compare against.

Some forces didn’t give us an exact figure for nationalities with fewer than five arrests.

For those, we chose to count them as just one. It means the actual number could be higher.

Dual foreign nationals were also excluded from our probe.

Due to the unavailability of official migrant crime statistics, the methodology used is one of the only ways to compare different nationalities.

Using Afghanistan as an example, Census data shows there were 27,850 people born there without British citizenship living here in 2021.

According to the FOIs, there were at least 281 arrests of Afghan nationals for sex offences during the 12-month spell. This equated to a rate of 1,009 per 100,000.

Similar analyses by the Centre for Migration Control estimated a rate of around 50 per 100,000 for Britons.

The higher rate of arrests for foreign nationalities could be down to a host of factors, including the possibility that police might disproportionately target some groups.

The data also does not consider sex of the alleged offender.

An estimated 98 per cent of sexual offences are committed by men, meaning the ratios could be much higher if broken down.

A spokesperson for the Home Office declined to comment when presented with the data.

Hungary, Ukraine and Finland saw the lowest rates of arrests.

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In terms of raw numbers, MailOnline can reveal more Indians were arrested for sexual offences than any other foreign nationality last year (785).

But with an Indian-born non-British population of 437,566, it meant India ranked 40th in the league table.

Romanians were the second most arrested nationality, with 668 over 12 months, followed by Poland with 649 citizens.

Mr Bates added: ‘We know which nationalities are more likely to commit certain heinous crimes, yet our immigration system is presently doing nothing to try and stave off this crisis.

‘The Home Office has a duty to keep the British public safe, something it is patently failing to do with its open-door policy.

‘Coming to Britain is an immense privilege, and any foreign national found guilty of committing a crime should be removed from our country forthwith so they no longer blight the lives of the British public.’

The Government has previously claimed to have returned more than 24,000 individuals with no right to be in country since Labour took power and a 16 per cent increase in foreign national offenders being removed in the same period.

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