On 21 August Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced ‘new measures to strengthen border security, enforce immigration rules and increase returns’. By then, the thoroughly racist Labour government which came to power on 5 July 2024 had already deported nine planeloads of ‘failed asylum seekers’ and ‘foreign criminals’ to Brazil, Vietnam and elsewhere. Nicki Jameson reports.
Cooper’sannouncementfollowed on from earlier statements by her and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, both while still in opposition and since winning the election. The previous Conservative government’s improbable flagship plan to send would-be asylum seekers arriving in Britain to Rwanda had hit problem after problem, primarily in the form of prolonged legal challenges, but also through direct action protests. Labour had therefore pledged that, if elected, it would scrap this ‘costly gimmick’ and replace it with a series of different, but equally vicious measures designed to ‘smash the gangs’ and ‘regain control of the borders’.
The Rwanda Plan has indeed now been shelved. Some sections of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 have also been amended to allow asylum claims that it had prevented being processed to now proceed. However, nothing else has changed. The rest of the raft of draconian immigration legislation brought in by successive governments remains in place, including the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which differentiated between would-be asylum seekers who arrive ‘legally’ in the country and those who arrive ‘illegally’, ie by small boat or lorry.
Labour’s plans
Reiterating previous statements in opposition, Cooper now promised:
- to deploy ‘100 new specialist intelligence and investigations officers’ via the National Crime Agency to ‘disrupt and smash criminal smuggling gangs and prevent dangerous boat crossings’;
- ‘a large surge’ in deportation flights, with the aim of putting removals at their highest level since 2018;
- increased detention capacity and punishment for ‘unscrupulous employers who hire workers illegally’.
To illustrate the final point, between 18 and 24 August, immigration enforcement raided 275 small businesses, mainly car washes; 135 premises were served with notices for employing illegal workers. Whilst the government claims that such raids target the ‘unscrupulous’ employers and are designed to support vulnerable workers, the fact that 85 such workers were arrested and detained gives the lie to this.
In a further announcement on 17 September, following Starmer’s meeting with right-wing Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, Cooper promised to spend £75m on ‘cutting edge new technology, extra officers and further covert capabilities across the system’. The Labour government is clearly impressed by Meloni, who has presided over ‘a significant drop in irregular migration thanks to tougher enforcement and enhanced cooperation with international partners’. Central to this strategy is the pushing back of boats to North Africa and the planned ‘offshoring’ of the processing of asylum applications to Albania.
Round-ups and deportation flights
Although the Rwanda Plan is no more, the support infrastructure created by the Conservative government for it will still be put to use. The German government is considering leasing the accommodation constructed in Rwanda for deported British migrants for use in a mooted scheme of its own, while the British Labour government is redirecting flights which had been booked to fly to Rwanda to other locations. On 24 July the first such flight took off for Vietnam and Timor Leste carrying 46 people. The government boasted that this was the first ever charter flight deportation to Timor Leste and the first to Vietnam since 2022, and that there would be many more ‘flights to return foreign criminals and immigration offenders who have no right to be here’ in the coming months.
The repeated emotive references to ‘foreign criminals’ is designed to obfuscate that government policy does not only attack those convicted of criminal offences, but targets people fleeing both persecution and economic hardship abroad. At the same time, the laws preventing people who may have lived in Britain their whole lives from remaining here once they have been convicted of a crime have been increasingly punitive, particularly since the last Labour government introduced ‘automatic deportation’ for ‘foreign national offenders’ in 2007/8. Faced with laws stacked against them and a lack of free legal advice, many ‘foreign prisoners’ accept deportation, signing up to the Early Removal Scheme (ERS), which allows them to be deported 18 months prior to the end of their sentences. Ironically, keen as it is to herd onto planes people who do not wish to go, when it comes to those who are willing to leave, the Home Office operates at a snail’s pace, leaving many people still languishing in prison months after their ERS date.
Cooper is now boasting that 14,500 people will be deported by the end of 2024, with the emphasis on ‘safe countries’ such as Vietnam, Albania, Egypt, India and Pakistan, whose nationals can easily be refused asylum, as opposed to ‘unsafe countries’, predominantly Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, from where 82-96% of asylum applications are currently granted.
Detention centres
On 29 August, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) published its annual report on the treatment of detainees in Gatwick Immigration Removal Centre (IRC). Gatwick IRC combines two previously separately run IRCs, Brook House and Tinsley House, both located near Gatwick airport. The report notes ‘a substantial increase in violence across both centres in 2023’ and that the use of force by staff against detainees had more than doubled.
A year earlier the government had published the report of a public inquiry into Brook House, sparked by revelations in a secretly filmed Panorama programme which the inquiry described as: ‘Containing disturbing footage, the documentary portrayed Brook House as violent, dysfunctional and unsafe. It showed the use of abusive, racist and derogatory language by some staff towards those in their care, the effects of illicit drugs, and the use of force by staff on mentally and physically unwell detained people.’
On top of overt physical violence, the IMB report details inappropriate treatment of detainees with mental health problems by staff members with no relevant training, handcuffing of those being taken to hospital, lack of meaningful legal advice and the payment of detainees who do cleaning and other work while they are in the IRC at a pitiful rate of £1 an hour.
This is the type of environment which Labour has pledged to expand. Haslar IRC in Hampshire, which closed in 2016, and Campsfield House IRC in Oxfordshire, which closed in 2018, are both now set to reopen.
Labour Party – racist party
The Labour government of 1997-2010 presided over a vicious deportation regime. In 2008 Immigration Minister Phil Woolas boasted that the government was deporting one person every eight minutes, and in 2009 Home Secretary Jacqui Smith hammered the message home, saying: ‘The message is clear – whether you’re a visa overstayer, a foreign criminal or a failed asylum seeker, the UK Border Agency is determined to track you down and remove you from Britain.’
In government Labour introduced five new immigration acts, all of which are still in force, alongside the subsequent Conservative laws which brought in the ‘hostile environment’ and attacked the right to asylum. Aside from the specific provisions in the Illegal Migration Act, none of this is being repealed and instead there is more to come. A new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill was announced in the King’s Speech on 17 July. The announcement reiterated earlier pronouncements by Starmer that counter-terrorism measures would be used to combat ‘immigration crime’. An article by Migrant Rights Network on 2 September describes how ‘approaching migration through counter-terror’ will lead to ‘even greater surveillance of and denial of rights for migrants, including refugees’:
‘This dangerous bill would introduce powers previously confined to alleged terror offenders, including travel bans and restrictions in the UK and abroad, restrictions on access to the internet and banking, and the ability to apply these measures before someone is even convicted of smuggling offences.’
In Parliament on 22 July Cooper further explained that the Bill will include ‘fast-track’ asylum measures. The previous Labour government’s ‘detained fast-track’ scheme was suspended in 2015, following legal challenge, and ruled unlawful in 2017.
In a weak response to Labour’s plans, the Refugee Council urged the government to drop the ‘rhetoric’ of the previous administration and instead adopt the language of ‘compassion and humanity’. There is little chance of this happening, but language is not the issue. The incoming government’s job is to manage the economy and the borders on behalf of capital. Migrants will be tolerated insofar as they are required for the needs of capitalism, and will be permitted to enter under rigorously policed conditions to discharge that function. People arriving here fleeing war, destitution and climate change, much of which has been directly caused by the imperialist British government, will continue to be vilified, detained and deported, as well as being deliberately and wrongly scapegoated, both by the government itself and by freelance racists, for problems such as the lack of housing and cuts in welfare which affect the whole working class. Confronting this requires the building of a strong anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement which can challenge the racist Labour government.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 302 October/November 2024
