Channel migrant murder victim's mum blames Keir Starmer as she brands UK 'laughing stock'

The heartbroken mother of Rhiannon Whyte branded Britain a “laughing stock” as she blamed Keir Starmer for a Channel migrant killing her daughter. Siobhan Whyte said countries such as the United States and Australia had been more effective in deterring illegal migration, while Labour just let “them in”.

Sudanese asylum seeker Deng Majek laughed and danced after stabbing mother-of-one Rhiannon 23 times with a screwdriver in a frenzied 90-second attack. She had been working at the hotel where he was staying, funded by the taxpayer. After finishing her shift, he followed her to Bescot Road railway station in Walsall, where the killing took place in October 2024.

Mrs Whyte told the Daily Express she is fearful for her 13-year-old granddaughter’s safety, as women and girls are at risk of serious violence. Speaking with tears in her eyes during a sombre press conference alongside Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, she warned of more killings and sex attacks unless urgent action is taken.

“I’m petrified. I’ve got a 13-year-old granddaughter, and she goes out and about with her friends. They don’t seem to care if it’s a man or a woman," she said. “I worry about my children. What future have they got? We are a laughing stock. The UK is a laughing stock. America stops them, the Australians stop them, all these other countries stop them. Stop them from coming in here.

“France has been paid hundreds of millions to stop the boats, and they are just letting them in. Stop them at the borders. Send them back, let them deal with them. Send them back to their country. Why should they be allowed here?”

CCTV from inside the Park Inn hotel, which was being used to house asylum seekers, showed Majek hanging around the reception area staring at Rhiannon throughout the evening.

She left after her shift and had been speaking to a friend on the phone when Majek brutally attacked her on the empty train platform at around 11pm. The mother-of-one had been stabbed 23 times to the head and left side of her chest and arm, including one wound which was so deep it pierced her brain stem.

She died in the hospital three days later. No motive has been established for why Majek attacked her.

Majek had arrived in the UK on a small boat about three months before the attack and applied for asylum. Following the attack, he took her phone and discarded it in a nearby river. And fury erupted after he was spotted dancing and laughing in the migrant hotel car park after the attack. He was jailed for 29 years in January.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the murder was “perhaps the most shocking we’ve seen to date”, committed by a small boat migrant.

And Mrs Whyte told the Daily Express on Tuesday: “I blame the Government. I do blame him [Starmer]. I don’t think they care. Khan, Starmer, Jess Phillips, Mahmood, would they feel the same if it was their family?”

Visibly angry over the border crisis engulfing the UK, she added: “He took Rhiannon’s life in 90 seconds, stabbed her through the brain stem.

“He has never shown any remorse, he called forensics (experts) liars, he just didn’t care, he didn’t tell us why, he just denied everything. So, we’ve had to live with that. Her little boy’s been left without a mum, my children have been left without a sister, and I’ve lost my daughter through these scumbags that were allowed into this country illegally.

“Something needs to be done; they need to stop allowing them in, because it’s not Rhiannon who will be next. Sadly there’s children, there’s young girls getting raped. When’s the next murder, and a family having to go through what we’re going through?”

Almost 70,000 migrants have crossed the Channel since Labour came into office, with more asylum seekers having arrived in a small boat under the Labour leader’s watch than any other UK leader. And Labour’s plans have been thrown into turmoil by the falling number of interceptions in France, while talks on a new deal stalled.

The one-in, one-out deal has also failed to deter those hoping to cross in a small boat. Some 4,766 have arrived so far this year, with many thousands more expected to cross in the coming months as the weather improves. A series of serious sexual offences in recent months has heightened concern about the risk posed to women and girls by some undocumented illegal migrants.

Last month, Afghan Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, was sentenced to 16 years for abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton. He had arrived in the UK by small boat approximately four months before the offences. In January, Mehmet Ogur, a 27-year-old Kurdish asylum seeker, was jailed for seven years for raping an 18-year-old woman in a park. He had been staying at a hotel in Tamworth and is believed to have arrived in the country only weeks earlier.

A month before, Israr Niazal and Jan Jahanzeb, both 17-year-old Afghan asylum seekers, were convicted of abducting and raping a 15-year-old girl in Leamington Spa. In November 2025, Iranian asylum seeker Amin Abedi Mofrad, 35, was jailed for nine years and six months for raping a 15-year-old girl near Oxford's Westgate shopping centre.

Calling for stricter legislation to be introduced in her daughter's name, Mrs Whyte said her family has been left “broken” by Majek’s horrific crime. She told the Daily Express: “We’re broken, all of us are broken. We’re a strong family. But we are broken as a family. He understands that his mummy isn’t here anymore and that there was a bad man. And he wants to be a brain doctor because of this. He thinks he can help people with brain injuries. How do you explain that to a child?"

She said that since the attack, she has been targeted by a sick troll on social media.

“People have said she had blue hair so she deserved it. She worked in a hotel so she deserved it. We’ve had so much hate," she said. “It breaks me, last week I wanted to give up. But I need to keep going here. I worry about my children, I worry about my grandchildren, I worry about Rhiannon’s son. I have to keep fighting and get my voice out there. They take them out of hotels and put them in HMOs. We don’t know who they are, where they are.

“It’s why I want this Rhiannon’s Law put in place. So, if I need to fight the Government for that, so be it.”

'Rhiannon’s Law' would provide for the immediate detention and vetting of migrants on arrival. Border officials would conduct more rigorous checks for evidence of criminal history, while asylum seekers would also be screened for infectious diseases.
Under the proposals, their movements would be restricted, preventing them from freely circulating in the community while their status is assessed.

Mrs Whyte added: “Vetting [migrants] so they are on a curfew, they can’t come in and out. Put [migrants] in an old Army barracks, and put a curfew on so that they cannot wander the streets. Everyone says it happens at night-time, no, it’s happening in the day as well."

Mr Farage, speaking in the press conference in Bedworth, West Mids, said: “Who next? There is nothing being done to change any of this. There is no plan with the French, and it doesn’t really matter how much money we send them, because we’ve given them £800 million to stop this since 2014, and I think cases like this genuinely outrage the British public as they should. This murder, this death was wholly unnecessary in every way.”

A Labour Party spokesperson, responding to Reform UK's press conference on illegal migration today, said: “This Government is taking decisive action to bear down on small boat crossings and restore control of our borders. We have already stopped over 42,000 illegal migrants attempting to cross the Channel since the General Election, and removed or deported nearly 60,000 people with no right to be here. But we are going further - removing the incentives that draw people into dangerous crossings and ramping up removals, so the system is fair, controlled and works in the national interest."