The British Labour government has intensified its drive to expel migrants, demonstrating its commitment to the hostile environment strategy. Between 1 July 2024 and 31 July 2026, the Home Office recorded a total of 80,286 deportations. Across the country, immigration officers are turning up everywhere, recognised by local communities as Britain’s own ICE agents. In the last 24 months, UK Immigration Enforcement gangs made over 17,000 arrests during workplace raids, a 122% increase on the previous two-years. During these unannounced operations, immigration officers use legal loopholes or coerce employers in order to gain entry without a court warrant.
While this surge covers the whole country, London, the Southwest and the West Midlands have seen a devastating spike in enforcement activity. Driven by the regional expansion of ‘Operation Fearless’, which legitimises the overpolicing of ethnic minority and working class communities, the West Midlands recorded an unprecedented 701 arrests across 884 workplace raids in 2026.
The Home Office’s strategic focus on the logistics sector was seen on 18 July, when it uploaded digital footage from raids on three Evri depots. Immigration officers staged an hours-long interrogation of workers, resulting in the arrest of 10 people. This coordinated assault follows a similar crackdown on DPD depots in Basingstoke and Newbury the previous month, all part of a targeted prioritisation of warehousing, distribution and delivery services that drove a 217% increase in targeted arrests between 2024 and 2025. The state is focusing its attacks on these migrants who are most vulnerable and exploited. By pairing these raids with punitive £60,000 per worker fines on employers, the state shows its determination to deny vulnerable workers the bare means of survival.
Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Border Security and Asylum Minister Anna Turley celebrated these statistics, claiming that this surge in enforcement activity is the ‘highest level in British history’. However, in a competition to win the votes of the openly racist and reactionary sections of the British electorate, Reform UK denounced the government for taking credit for a trend which Tory policies started before Labour took power in July 2024.
The acceleration of Labour’s racist, anti-migrant policies is most evident in the government’s plans to expand its detention capacity. Two previously closed immigration removal centres – Campsfield House in Oxfordshire and Haslar in Hampshire – will see their combined bed count triple from 290 to 1,000 by 2030. Capitalising on the demands of racist rioters who targeted asylum hotels, the government is converting former military bases into mass holding facilities. Sites like MDP Wethersfield in Essex and Crowborough Training Camp in East Sussex are already in use, and Labour has sought planning permission to convert three additional bases in Oxfordshire, Suffolk, and North Yorkshire into holding centres for 3,750 asylum seekers.
To expel surplus migrant labour amid the capitalist crisis, the state is imposing a reign of terror on working-class migrant communities. Meanwhile, groups like Stand up to Racism continue to refuse to take up the fight against state racism. Instead they deliberately divert all attention towards the far right despite the fact that it is not the far right carrying out the raids, expanding the detention centres and carrying out a record-breaking number of deportations, it is the British state currently controlled by the Labour government.
As these attacks continue, more people will be driven into direct conflict with the state. We must fight back against this repression by organising against the immigration raids, deportations, and the racist British state. We must take inspiration from the movement against state racism in the US, where the working class took to the streets of Minneapolis and fought back against the paramilitary ICE forces occupying their city and forced the US state to end Operation Metro Surge, the violent anti-migrant crackdown in the city. Resistance has continued throughout the US, both inside and outside ICE detention centres. That is the movement we must build in Britain.
