The Belfast knife-attack suspect was granted asylum under a fast-track application scheme because of his nationality.
Hadi Alodid, 30, only had to complete a Home Office questionnaire rather than attend a face-to-face interview because of the “security and humanitarian situation” in Sudan.
He travelled from the north African country to Paris and then on to Dublin before catching a bus to Belfast in February 2023.
Alodid was granted refugee status and given five years leave to remain in the UK, until 2028.
He appeared by video-link at Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday charged with the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie.
The streamlined asylum process (SAP) scheme was set up when Rishi Sunak was prime minister, in an effort to double the average number of asylum claims processed per week in a bid to grip the backlog.
The Tory home secretary at the time, Suella Braverman, and immigration minister Robert Jenrick, have both since defected to Reform UK.
The scheme is intended to be used for the processing of people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, without the need for a “personal interview”.
According to guidance from when SAP was introduced in 2023, claimants from those countries had a grant rate of “over 95%”, meaning a less rigorous process could be followed to save caseworkers’ time.
Asked about her party’s part in introducing the scheme, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch told LBC Radio: “I wasn’t leader at the time, I also wasn’t in the Home Office at the time.
“All I can do is apologise to people.
“The people who enacted that policy have now run to Reform and pretending they had nothing to do with it. The rest of us are here trying to clean the mess up.
“Our kindness has been exploited. There was an assumption, certainly amongst the civil service, but even within the political class, that everybody claiming asylum was genuine. This is naive. We need to get tough.”
Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said asylum seekers are now interviewed in “almost all cases”.
He told BBC Breakfast: “That was a system that was put in place by the last Conservative government, in part because they completely lost control of immigration… It was chaotic.
“And anyone who applies now is properly processed. Their details are taken and everybody is checked against the security databases.
“My understanding is, in almost all cases, that they will be interviewed.”
Once in the Republic of Ireland, Alodid would have been able to travel to Northern Ireland without facing any routine immigration border checks because of the Common Travel Area (CTA), the arrangement between the United Kingdom and Ireland which gives citizens the right to travel freely between both countries.
Gaps in the published data mean it is not known how many asylum seekers are travelling via Ireland to the UK or in the opposite direction.
But Home Office figures show the UK removed only one migrant under an asylum returns deal signed with Ireland in 2020.
The informal returns agreement was signed and then paused under the previous government.
The Government is preparing to intensify efforts to stop the CTA being used as a back route.
A minister said 1,500 enforcement operations linked to “illegal immigration” have taken place in Northern Ireland over the last 12 months with more than 1,200 arrests.
“It is something this Government takes very, very seriously,” Cabinet Office minister Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent told the Lords.
