The Hostile Office
Immigration Raids and Enforcement
Immigration raids are a fear mechanism. They are a form of racist State intimidation and divide racialised communities.
Our Immigration Raids: An Anatomy of Racist Intimidation report dissects the secretive and opaque nature of Immigration Enforcement’s intelligence gathering, guidance on multi-agency operations and police cooperation. Raids also have a disproportionate impact on racialised communities and act as a method to divide or intimidate migrants and People of Colour while making millions in civil penalties in the process. For a more accessible and printer friendly version of the report, click here.
We are watching the raids, but we can’t do this alone. Visit our new Raids Website here to log immigration raids in your area.
Our Raids Website includes:
- A historic heat map showing areas across the UK where 6 or more immigration raids occurred between 1st January 2022 and 30th September 2023.
- A reporting tool to log immigration raids in your local area. The information from this form will be checked weekly and imported into a reporting map.
If you are worried about experiencing an immigration raid, or would like to learn more about supporting your local group, please refer to the contact list below. It may be helpful to search your local group and connect with them so you know who to contact if you see/ experience a raid.
You can find more information about the network and resources on the anti-raids website. We have also added a contact list which you can check out below.
Note: the network is decentralised and self-organised, which means that some groups will be more able to respond to a raid alert than others. If your area does not have a local group, you can contact: [email protected]
Immigration Raids and Enforcement policies are rapidly evolving. Subscribe to our Substack blog for the latest on raids or you can read our latest posts below:
Immigration Enforcement raids are an opaque mechanism of the Hostile Environment. The parameters and powers under which they operate is a form of State power and an extension of racist border controls.
Immigration Enforcement raids target particular nationalities because they are seen as easily removable. Raids are ‘justified’ by the State by fabricating their importance in targeting those living in Britain without permission, and through claims about people “abusing” the system and “taking away the scarce resources” that “rightfully” belong to British citizens. Moreover, Immigration Enforcement operations seek to gain consent for their violent actions by constructing migration as a ‘crime’ and a form of harm. Immigration raids are presented as necessary through an official narrative of controlling borders and “protecting” the nation.
Mapping the raids by nationality and location
Nationality
The top 10 nationalities have remained consistent over the period we’ve been researching immigration raids: South Asians are particularly overrepresented in affected raids, as well as Albanians and Romanians.
The nationalities facing the highest arrest rates – having an arrest-encounter ratio of one or more (i.e. arrests are equal to or higher than “encounters”)
Data breakdown
| Nationality (22-23) | No.of People | Nationality (23-24) | No. of people (encountered) | No. of people (arrested) |
| India | 5,237 | India | 2830 | 1536 |
| British Citizen | 3,546 | Brazil | 1031 | 951 |
| Albania | 2,952 | Romania | 1262 | 606 |
| Romania | 2,453 | British Citizen | 1847 | 10 |
| Bangladesh | 1,963 | Pakistan | 1314 | 375 |
| Pakistan | 1,918 | Bangladesh | 1265 | 420 |
| Brazil | 1,823 | Albania | 714 | 894 |
| China | 1,548 | China | 817 | 421 |
| Iran (Islamic Republic of) | 1,522 | Iran (Islamic Republic of) | 845 | 269 |
| Iraq | 1,499 | Iraq | 634 | 336 |
- Albania, Jordan, East Timor, Uzbekistan, Indonesia, Honduras, Palestine, Tunisia, Kuwait Bidoun, Mauritius, Gambia, Azerbaijan, Argentina, Mongolia, Mexico (italics are the ones where the greatest number of people have been targeted by raids)
In some cases, there are Immigration Enforcement campaigns to target specific nationalities coming from the Home Secretary, specifically Albanians.
Location
As part of our groundbreaking research, we created a heatmap using GIS software, which visually sets out the geographical distribution of immigration enforcement across the UK.
Immigration raids often take place either in city centres on businesses, in areas with significant racialised populations, or in significant areas for migration routes. This does not mean that immigration raid figures necessarily directly correlate to the number of undocumented migrants in that area, due to the spurious nature of ‘intelligence’ and the areas of focus for enforcement operations.
Belfast and the Common Travel Area (CTA)
Belfast is the most targeted place for raids out of the whole of the UK. This is because of the Common Travel Area (CTA), where freedom of movement for British and Irish citizens on the island of Ireland can enable people to travel between the UK and EU via the Republic of Ireland, without having to go through immigration checks. While people are often caught out near the soft border, as migrants are excluded from CTA travel rights, the overwhelming targets are ports of travel between Britain and Ireland through Belfast.
- BT29, covering Belfast International Airport, has also increasingly seen a disproportionate number of raids
- BT3 has therefore consistently been the postcode prefix with the highest number of recorded raids, covering Belfast Harbour, as well as Belfast City Airport
Transport Hubs
- DG9, Stranraer, and CH41, Birkenhead, as they include Cairnryan Port and Liverpool Birkenhead Port, respectively, which are the major ferry routes between Britain and Belfast
- Areas with airports have also been increasingly targeted, compared to 2018-19. This includes London Luton Airport (2022-23), Liverpool John Lennon Airport, and Edinburgh Airport (2023-24)
- For other ports, Dover emerged in the top 10 most raided postcodes in 2023-24, as well as Holyhead, which has received press coverage relating to an increase in immigration enforcement targeting ferry travel with the Republic of Ireland
London
London previously used to dominate the most raided locations, but this has not been the case with more recent data (from 2022 onwards). London, as well as Govanhill in Glasgow, has been the site of several major anti-raids mobilisations, and has a number of active anti-raids groups across the city. We believe London is now less targeted for this reason, as well as the above shift in strategic priorities to transport hubs, as a result of guidance we investigated as part of our 2024 report.
- The areas in London that remain highly targeted are Croydon and Harlesden. In 2023-24, Woolwich also entered the top 10 locations targeted in the UK. All of these locations have higher than average Black populations
Data breakdown
| Post Code Prefix (22-23) | Total | Post code prefix (23-24) | Total |
| BT3 | 1,277 | BT3 | 689 |
| DG9 | 1,102 | CH41 | 567 |
| CH41 | 485 | DG9 | 487 |
| BT29 | 483 | BT29 | 476 |
| LU2 | 203 | L24 | 202 |
| RH6 | 189 | CR0 | 181 |
| CR0 | 188 | CT17 | 125 |
| ST4 | 148 | NW10 | 113 |
| SA1 | 114 | SE18 | 103 |
| NW10 | 110 | LL65 | 98 |
Anatomy of raids
Operations follow a similar pattern from intelligence gathering and picking targets to carrying out the enforcement activity and its aftermath. Raids on workplaces span a range of targets from small business to factories or multiple premises which can involve numerous ICE teams and other agencies.
However, there are differences in the nature of operations and lack of clarity around the intelligence that is used to inform the raids. As Corporate Watch has documented, these operations are secretive and rely largely on low-grade intelligence such as ‘tip-offs’, including fabricated reports from rival businesses or gossip.
Intelligence gathering and data-sharing: According to a National Audit Office report into Immigration Enforcement, the Home Office receives over 60,000 pieces of intelligence each year, mostly from members of the public. Immigration Intelligence teams assess these against ‘national priorities’ and the ‘potential risk of harm’, which are then passed onto Immigration Compliance and Enforcement (ICE).
Pre-visit research, checks and surveillance: Enforcement Planning Assessments Guidance sets out steps Immigration Enforcement officers details the preparatory gathering of intelligence that must take place before an operational visit or operation. These findings are recorded in PRONTO- a digital policing product supplied by Motorola Solutions UK Limited. However, it is unclear how officials conducting pre-visit checks determine the immigration status from surveillance at the premises, and it cannot be ruled out that racial profiling constitutes a substantial part of these checks.
A significant or red risk operations categorisations make reference to “significant attempts may be made to obstruct the operation” implies that the presence of anti-raids and community resistance factors into ICE risk assessments.
Successive policy announcements by the Government to increase raids as part of Hostile Environment policies raises questions around how this impacts the number of ‘intelligence’ acted upon in addition to the amount of pre-visit checks that are conducted and it is important to interrogate how this translates to intelligence analysis, and if pre-visit checks and surveillance are being conducted ‘thoroughly’.
Raids are a fear mechanism
The function of raids is not only to exclude, but it is also to disrupt the lives of migrants, their families, businesses and communities, and to impose a form of terror. As previous research has demonstrated, these enforcement practices produce heightened fear, insecurity, and social isolation and exclusion.
Immigration raids are also a form of State-enabled kidnapping. This highlights how States capture and exert control over migrants
Anti-Raids Guidance
Community-based anti-raids networks across towns and cities in the UK have suggested the following for those resisting raids
- Spread the word: Tell people around you what’s happening, call your friends, contact your local anti-raids group
- Protect the person being removed and make sure you know your rights
- Make sure people know that they do not have to answer questions and can leave
- If they do want to leave, walk away with them
- Film immigration officers and police. If someone is being detained, check with them first, or only film the officers
- Interact with the officers. Ask why these specific people are being questioned
It is vital we stand up and send a clear message to the State: our communities do not consent to raids. We demand not only an end to raids, but also to the Hostile Environment that inflicts fear on communities including surveillance, and right to work and rent checks.