Counter-terrorism policies are creeping into the UK immigration system. While the influence of counter-terror in the migration system has been present and growing for years, this has been accelerated by the current Government. Migration is increasingly being framed as a “national security” issue and the new Border Security Command, with its accompanying Border Security Bill, represents the latest escalation of this in policy under the new Government.

At the core of both counter-terrorism and immigration policies is a colonial-era racist idea of who is a “threat” to the UK (and West).  Racism, including Islamophobia, comes to pose Muslim migrants specifically as a threat, where they are particularly targeted under the counter-terror apparatus.

Defining “terrorism”

In the context of increasing populations being criminalised as “terrorists”, including migrants travelling on irregular routes and activists, it is important to define ‘terrorism’ as a political construction. This means that terrorism does not exist objectively – as in there is no ideology or action that has a single, constant definition as ‘terrorist.’ Rather it is something that is defined within a political context, and in opposition to dominant ideologies and political objectives.

As a result, the label of “terrorism” is often unequally applied. It can therefore come to include groups fighting for self-determination, often in the context of the oppressive legacies of colonial rule, being proscribed, with no action taken against the governments enacting the oppression. The proscription (labelling as terrorist) of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in the UK, for example, has therefore been controversial. 

Dr Amina Shareef explains that White supremacist ideology creates an inequality between which types of violence are deemed legitimate and which are deemed terrorist. For migrants, there are those that come from “suspect” populations, and are forced to take irregular migration routes, such as the Channel, that are increasingly policed as ‘national security’ threats. Migrants forced into precarious and criminalised migration routes are therefore increasingly finding themselves subjected to the ‘terror system’, who, when in the UK, have this used to blame them for any upset with mistreatment, pathologising their own marginalisation by the state.

Deprivation of Citizenship

In our Hostile Office report, we explored how deprivation of citizenship under “public good” grounds targets Muslim migrants, migratised and racialised citizens. The vast majority of those subject to deprivation measures are Muslim, and deemed to hold nationalities of countries in South Asia, North Africa, West Asia and East Africa. However, many of them did not hold these nationalities at the time of their deprivation – they were only assumed to because they had non-European heritage. 

Deprivation of citizenship powers combine counter-terror and immigration policies to deport and deprive marginalised citizens who are demonised as “terrorists,” and an ever-expanding population of racialised citizens who can potentially be stripped of their citizenship from birth.

Prevent Review

The Independent Review of Prevent, written by William Shawcross, a Senior Fellow at the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange, focused heavily on “Islamist extremism.” In doing so, it neglected the significance of the far-right who would go on to engage in racist rioting, including setting fire to a building housing people seeking asylum. 

Instead, the report chooses to further stigmatise migrants, particularly Muslim migrants, by framing them as a ‘terror threat’ depending on their country of origin and their reaction to mistreatment in the UK. The report states that people who are fleeing conflict zones or “from parts of the world where extremist ideologies have a strong presence, are more likely to be susceptible to radicalisation…especially if they are deeply disappointed by their reception in the UK”. 

Because of the racialised nature of the language of extremism and radicalisation, it is far more likely that “parts of the world where extremist ideologies have a strong presence” is meant to reference or will mostly applied to people from racialised countries with a large Muslim population – it is less likely that Ukraine, with a well-known problem with the far-right both before and during the war with Russia, would be included, despite concerns of racism amongst some Ukrainian refugees. It is also astounding that being “deeply disappointed” with how you are being treated – for example, being housed in overcrowded accommodation far from any kind of community, or constantly hearing politicians refer to you as a problem, even “invasion” – is something that should be seen as a sign of ‘radicalisation.’

As of yet, Prevent is still voluntary for Immigration Enforcement, but given the previous Government accepted the recommendation to employ Prevent as a Duty in the immigration system, it is likely that this will be implemented in the near future.

Border Security Command

The Border Security Command is an inter-agency task force, modelled on the National Counter Terrorism Security Office and run by Martin Hewitt, the former chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council. It will bring in counter-terror strategies, with an emphasis on intelligence capabilities and high-tech equipment, to primarily target those who facilitate Channel crossings – who the Government call “criminal smuggling gangs.”

The Command will be accompanied by the Border, Security and Asylum Bill. This proposes powers that have previously been confined to alleged terror offenders, including travel bans and restrictions in the UK and abroad, restrictions on access to internet and banking, and the ability to apply these measures before someone is even convicted of smuggling offences. 

Immigration Raids and Enforcement

Operation Gull has existed for years as an immigration policing operation in the Common Travel Area (CTA) between Britain and the Republic of Ireland. It has previously been revealed that an accompanying counter-terror operation, Operation Bi-Vector (UK-wide but run by the PSNI’s intelligence branch), has been used to detain people to hand over to immigration authorities, by-passing (at least somewhat) regulated immigration checks. In fact, despite powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 being used over 12,000 times between 2013 and 2016 alone, not a single one of these stops resulted in detention under counter-terror powers. Instead, people were largely handed over to immigration agencies. Our research on immigration raids suggests that Operation Gull has been expanded to Scotland and England in areas with high levels of movement between Britain and the North of Ireland.

What do we do? 

Instead of combatting the racism, Islamophobia and anti-migrant violence of the far-right, the Government has moved to appease them through continuing an approach to migrants that prioritises deportation, insecurity and surveillance over safety. As the Border Security Command comes into effect and this Government moves forward with its counter-terror style border policing strategy, we will be working to expose the growing reach of counter-terror powers in the immigration system.

Check out our other work in this area:

• Who is Welcome: Islamophobia and Migration
• ‘The UK’s Immigration System is Islamophobic and Racist. Expanding Prevent into it Will Re-traumatise Refugees’ – Byline Times
• ‘The Irony of the Hate Crime Funding Application that Includes Engaging with Prevent’ – Byline Times