Tory leadership hopeful Sajid Javid is facing criticism over the Home Office’s failure to find hundreds of foreign criminals who have gone on the run to dodge deportation.

Figures obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal 747 offenders from overseas, including convicted rapists and killers, have vanished after being released into the community.

A senior immigration source last night gave a grim assessment of the likelihood of the fugitives ever being caught.

In another extraordinary case, a convicted sex attacker facing deportation managed to escape from a prison van. Kamil Malag, 36, escaped as he was being taken to Hewell Grange prison in Redditch after an appeal hearing

‘It’s not usually something we like to publish, but once you vanish you will only get caught by luck,’ he admitted. ‘There are no resources any more.’

Foreign citizens – including asylum seekers, those caught entering the UK unlawfully and those overstaying their visa – are meant to report regularly to immigration centres or police stations if there are potential grounds to deport them.

But the figures, released under Freedom of Information laws, reveal that as of last September, 49,381 foreign nationals have disappeared.

Alarmingly, an additional 747 foreign criminals – 681 men and 66 women – have also gone missing. They are believed to include Hektor Mahmutaj, a convicted killer on Interpol’s most-wanted list who disappeared while the Government was trying to extradite him.

The 43-year-old is wanted in his native Albania after being sentenced in his absence in October 2000 to a 25-year jail term for shooting a farmer. He fled to the UK by hiding in a lorry and began a new life in Merseyside.

But he was convicted of a string of crimes in the UK, including drink-driving, driving while disqualified and possession of a firearm in 2007, when he was jailed for two-and-a-half-years.

He was released on conditional bail last year, but disappeared after Home Secretary Mr Javid signed an extradition order.

In another extraordinary case, a convicted sex attacker facing deportation managed to escape from a prison van. Kamil Malag, 36, escaped as he was being taken to Hewell Grange prison in Redditch after an appeal hearing.

The Home Office refused to disclose how the Polish national managed to escape on the M42 in February, but a source said last night that he was re-arrested in March and deported on May 22.

Under Home Office rules, all foreign nationals given a jail sentence are considered for removal from the UK.

But in a damning report in June 2017, Chief Inspector of Borders David Bolt revealed officials had lost track of 753 foreign criminals who faced deportation and that the team trying to find them had only 11 staff.

Foreign citizens – including asylum seekers, those caught entering the UK unlawfully and those overstaying their visa – are meant to report regularly to immigration centres or police stations if there are potential grounds to deport them. The UK Border is pictured above in a stock image [File photo]

Campaigners expressed shock that the number of foreign criminals ‘on the run’ has shrunk by only six since Mr Bolt’s report.

‘This is clear evidence of the continued failure of the Home Office to ensure the prompt removal of foreign offenders,’ said Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of Migration Watch UK. ‘Resources are clearly stretched, but there also seems to be a lack of political commitment.’

Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union also warned that more serious criminals ‘tend to have more in-depth criminal connections and consequently are harder to find’.

The number of foreign offenders deported dropped by 13 per cent in the year to November, a figure that Government sources say followed a Supreme Court ruling in June 2017 that found that deporting criminals before they had a chance to appeal breached their human rights.

A Home Office spokesman said 48,000 foreign offenders had been removed since 2010, adding: ‘We have a dedicated team working with the police and others to track down, arrest and return absconders to custody. Since the team was formed in 2009 it has traced 2,250 absconders’.