What the data does and doesn't tell us about asylum seekers in Northern Ireland

Police in Northern Ireland say a refugee charged with the attempted murder of a man in Belfast on Monday evening initially entered the country by crossing the border with the Republic of Ireland.

Sudanese national Hadi Alodid travelled from Dublin to Belfast in 2023 and was granted refugee status the same year.

He was able to cross the Irish border without documents because there are no routine immigration checks there.

This is due to the UK and Republic of Ireland being part of the Common Travel Area (CTA) which allows for passport-free travel by its citizens.

But the open nature of the border means there is little publicly available data showing exactly how many people are claiming asylum in Northern Ireland having arrived via the CTA.

The CTA is an arrangement dating back to 1922 when 26 of Ireland's 32 counties were granted a large degree of independence by the UK. It gives British and Irish citizens reciprocal rights in each others' countries.

Those rights include largely unrestricted, passport-free travel between the UK, Republic of Ireland and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man for British and Irish citizens.

People from other countries need to show a passport - and in some cases a visa - to enter the UK, Republic of Ireland and Crown Dependencies. It is unclear how Alodid passed border checks at Dublin Airport after arriving from Paris.

Without more formal controls the Irish border is a relatively open immigration route. It is policed under "Operation Gull", a long-running, intelligence-led initiative operated by the UK Home Office, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Police Scotland, and Ireland's police force, the Garda Síochána.

If someone is found without the right documents to be in the CTA they can be detained under UK immigration powers and returned to the Republic of Ireland.

However if that person was to claim asylum then they cannot be deported and would be entered into the UK asylum system while their claim is evaluated.

What do we know about the number of asylum seekers in Northern Ireland?

Home Office figures show there were 2,379 asylum seekers receiving asylum support in Northern Ireland as of March 2026. These individuals would need to have claimed asylum in Northern Ireland to receive support there.

This is the lowest number of people when compared with the other UK nations and English regions and is about average when adjusted for population.

These figures do not include asylum seekers who are supporting themselves financially.

Belfast hosts the largest number of asylum seekers, which - when adjusted for population - is the 10th highest in the UK, according to figures from 363 local authorities, with about one asylum seeker for every 200 residents.

The majority of those 1,607 people are housed in self-catered asylum accommodation such as houses of multiple occupancy (HMO). There are no asylum seekers in hotels in Belfast.

We also know, from government data, that 7,740 people arrived in the UK and claimed asylum through "other" routes which include the CTA. Róise McCann, a research officer with Law Centre NI, said the data does not distinguish which other routes fall into this category.

The 7,740 figure is also for the whole of the UK and is not broken down into its nations and regions. It does not tell us exactly how many people claimed asylum in Northern Ireland after arriving from elsewhere in the CTA.

There is also some evidence from the Republic of Ireland of travel in the other direction.

In September 2025, Irish Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan told a committee that asylum application figures suggested "the overwhelming majority of people" claiming international protection in the year so far had arrived over the border with Northern Ireland.

However, this is not based on a direct count of land border crossings, but on the experience of staff and others working in the field and material gathered at interviews, according to the website FactCheckNI.