The Hostile Office

Protection not Punishment. Say NO to the Border Security Bill

The new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill (a.k.a. Border Security Bill) will turn seeking protection into a national security issue and expand counter-terrorism powers. We’ve let the Government know what we think of this Bill, and have called on MPs to vote it down. But we can’t do this alone. If you want to join us in standing against this cruelty, and amplify our message of Protection Not Punishment, use our email template to urge your local representative to vote down the Bill.

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Video explainer

What will the new Bill do?

Further criminalise immigration to the UK by targeting the people who facilitate the travel of undocumented people, particularly across the Channel

The Bill extends already intrusive powers to seize people’s devices at the border
- This includes the ability to access, examine, copy and retain information on a person’s device related to (facilitating) criminalised travel
- This has been developed from counter-terror powers like Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to specifically apply to migrants crossing the Channel in small boats over the last three years (through the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and Illegal Migration Act 2023)
  - In the modern age, phones are a detailed and intimate record of our daily lives. Seizing and looking through someone’s phone is a crude invasion of the human right to privacy
It criminalises providing and possessing supplies and information that could conceivably be used to help someone travel without the required immigration documentation
It introduces sanctions against people suspected of facilitating criminalised travel using Serious Crime Prevention Orders (SCPOs)
It expands immigration detention by removing the requirement for a deportation order against someone to be in place

For a more detailed analysis of this Bill, click here.

We want MPs to vote against this Bill. But we also want:

Repeal policy of seizing phones at the border

While the new Bill would extend powers to seize electronic devices including phones from migrants, including people seeking asylum, this policy is not unprecedented in UK law.

The Home Office operated a policy of seizing phones from migrants crossing the Channel between 2018 and 2020. Despite being ruled as unlawful in 2022, an amendment to the Illegal Migration Act 2023 implemented powers to seize and retain electronic devices, as well as the ability to access, copy and use information stored on them.

We urge the Government to repeal existing powers to seize electronic devices as set out in the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

End criminalisation of facilitating crossings

So-called “small boat crossings” are a dangerous yet necessary way of seeking safety in the UK because “safe” routes do not exist for the majority of nationalities. Rather than address this, successive governments have stripped back routes to come to the UK while criminalising people who are forced into making dangerous Channel crossings.

The Bill would extend powers to criminalise people who act as intermediaries* to facilitate migration along ‘irregular’ routes. This builds on legislation in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 which introduced the new offence of ‘illegal arrival’ and criminalised ‘assisting an unlawful immigration or asylum seeker”.

It is Government legislation that forces people to turn to intermediaries, and then punishes them. This must end now.

*The word “intermediaries” describes people who facilitate the travel of criminalised migrants

Share your thoughts

We would like to hear from you!

If you would like to share any concerns or thoughts about the potential harmful effects of the Bill, please fill in the survey below. The answers collected in this survey will be used to inform our general campaigning against expansion of counter terror powers into immigration system.

Please be assured that your responses will be anonymous.

Fill in the survey here.