The Border Security Bill is making its way through Parliament. There’s been a lot of misunderstanding around what this Bill actually represents, and so we are here to clear things up for you. Yes, the Bill restarts deportation agreements and reduces routes to claim asylum, and this is horrible enough, but this is not just another “immigration Bill” like some would have you believe. It is so much more than that, and the ramifications are terrifying. Let’s get into it.
The main aim of the Bill is to further criminalise immigration to the UK, primarily by targeting intermediaries, or those who facilitate the travel of undocumented people, including via “small boat crossings”. What is especially alarming about the Border Security Bill however is that it marks the first time a counter-terror framework is being used as the primary approach to migration policy. This means that the Government has framed undocumented migration, and those who facilitate it, as a “global security threat”.
But why have they done this? Well, a counter-terrorism approach enables the Government to bring in surveillance, pre-crime policing, sentencing and other powers that would otherwise be seen as excessive and extreme. This mirrors what has happened to Muslim communities with counter-terror powers time and time again.
There are numerous excessive powers that will be brought in if this Bill passes. The Bill expands powers to seize people’s devices at the border, and also expands powers that criminalise those providing supplies or information meant to assist the travel of an undocumented migrant. The Bill also introduces sanctions against people suspected of facilitating criminalised travel using Serious Crime Prevention Orders (SCPOs), and expands immigration detention by removing the requirement for a deportation order against someone to be in place.
This Bill is yet another example of this Government’s commitment to violent border regimes that criminalise, exclude and penalise racialised and Muslim migrants from the Global South. In introducing this Bill, the Government has ignored its own responsibility for creating the situations of harm that push people seeking asylum into the hands of intermediaries in the first place. It is Government legislation, and its failure to create safe routes, that forces people to turn to intermediaries, and then punishes them.
It is this Government’s cruelty that is the threat to our collective wellbeing, not people seeking safety. We’ve let the Government know what we think of this Bill, and have called on MPs to vote down the Bill. Some of the powers in this Bill extend on previous powers introduced in other anti-migrant policies, and so alongside this, we also asked MPs to:
- Repeal the policy of seizing phones at the border (introduced in 2023 via the ‘Illegal Migration’ Act)
- Repeal the criminalisation of facilitating crossings (introduced in 2022 via the Nationality and Borders Act
But we can’t do this alone. We call on all those who stand in solidarity with migrants to email their MP using our ‘write to your MP’ tool. Together, let’s resist the Border Security Bill and all processes of criminalisation and marginalisation in our communities.