UK Labour government expels record 13,500 asylum seekers and migrants since coming to office

The UK Labour government has set a record for migrant removals, expelling almost 13,500 since it came to office in July and exceeding the previous Conservative government’s rate of deportations.

The news was reported by the Home Office this month with the headline, “Huge increase in migration returns and illegal working arrests.” Home Secretary Yvette Cooper boasted, “The number of operations and arrests are up, and we are on track to meet our target of increasing removals to the highest level in five years.”

Deportations to seven countries have been carried out, including Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria and Albania. The Guardian reported, “Sources in the [Home Office] department confirmed that 37 people were removed on the Pakistan flight. One of those forcibly removed was a refused asylum seeker whose wife was a dependant on his asylum claim”, adding “The Home Office removed him but left his wife in the UK.”

To expedite the removals, the government carried out workplace raids, targeting “nail bars, supermarkets and other relevant industries including car washes and construction.” The Home Office report continued, “…illegal working operations and arrests since the new government came into power are up by almost a third on the same period last year.”

In a December 23 update, the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement department noted that, just in London, “Nearly 1,000 enforcement visits have been carried out across the capital since the summer, thanks to a crackdown on illegal working by the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement team. Between July and November, 996 visits resulted in 770 arrests and 462 premises receiving civil penalty notice referrals.”

To beef up the capability of the Immigration and Enforcement agency further, an extra £5 million was announced for body-worn cameras to aid 1,200 frontline officers in the collection of evidence against errant employers. New fingerprint kits costing £3 million will be purchased to improve identity checks.

The government has also redeployed an extra 1,000 employees to Border Security. This enabled the return of more than 800 migrants on 33 charter flights to countries in Europe, Africa Asia and South America since July.

While denying the right of asylum to people displaced and/or without a livelihood—due, among other factors, to over 30 years of NATO wars in the Middle East and North Africa and routine imperialist plunder of the majority of the world’s economies—inhumane anti-immigrant policies are framed by Labour as preventing exploitation at work, and “smashing the [people smuggling] gangs”.

Cooper stated, “Illegal working is a blight on our economy. It is deeply exploitative and undercuts those employers who do the right thing and play by the rules.” This is a cynical ploy to blame migrants in cheap labour jobs for driving down wages, aiding the scapegoating efforts of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.

To demonise asylum seekers and immigrants further, the Home Office reported that of the 13,500 removed, 2,100 were criminals convicted of “drug offences, theft, rape and murder,” without breaking down this figure.

The department is also launching a publicity campaign directed at prospective migrants warning of “exploitative practices” and “dire and inhumane living conditions” should they come to Britain. So impressed with the government’s ruthless purge of immigrants was the right-wing Daily Express that it ran with the headline: “Yvette Cooper tells illegal migrants ‘don’t come to Britain—you’ll hate it.’”

But for the mouthpieces of the most right-wing sections of the media, no number of deportations is ever enough with a constant drumbeat demanding more. The Telegraph complained that Cooper had not set a timetable for reducing small boat crossings from France, lamenting the arrival of 609 people in nine dinghies December 12—a daily record since October 18.

The nominally liberal Independent reprimanded Labour for failing to include targets to reduce migration, both legal and illegal, in the review of its six missions. The publication complained that small boat crossings are on the rise, with 34,880 people arriving this year, including 21,306 since the general election. It cautioned that former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s failure to “stop the boats” helped bring down his government.

Interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Cooper declared that “border security is one of the [government’s]foundational issues, before you even get to any of the missions.”

Julia Tinsley-Kent, head of policy and communications at the Migrants’ Rights Network, accused the government of “criminalising migration”, adding “people are forced into making dangerous crossings because safe routes do not exist… Punishing migrants without permission to work or reside … pushes [them] into exploitative conditions.”

Emma Ginn, director of the charity Medical Justice, said, “The new data being celebrated by the government includes real people who have been unable to access legal representation, nor the medical and expert evidence needed to properly present their case, meaning some may face real risk on forced return to their country.

“Our volunteer doctors have visited some of them and documented their physical and psychological scars of torture as well as deterioration due to the notoriously dangerous UK immigration detention conditions. Many have been forcibly separated from their family, their friends and their community.”