All Articles: Enforcement
Legal issues for Ukrainians arriving in the United Kingdom from Ireland
There is no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and British and Irish citizens are able to cross the land border freely. Section 11(4) of the Immigration Act 1971 means that journeys within the Common Travel Area — ...
8th April 2022Quietly passing statutory instruments is no way to legislate on migrants’ rights
A new law preventing migrants from using their residence permits to prove their right to rent or work in the UK is coming into force without robust parliamentary debate. From 6 April 2022, no migrant in the UK will be able to use their biometric res ...
5th April 2022Windrush progress report shows too many lessons aren’t being learned
How is the Home Office doing with implementing the lessons it is supposed to have learned from the Windrush scandal? In March 2020, the independent Wendy Williams review of the department called for root and branch reform; the Home Secretary said that ...
4th April 2022Migrants who arrived by small boat may be able to claim damages for unlawful seizure of phones
The High Court has held that the Home Office’s search for and seizure of mobile phones from migrants who arrived by small boats from France, and the retention of extracted data, was unlawful. The case is R (HM, MA, KH) v Secretary of State for the H ...
29th March 2022Carriers’ liability: what counts as an “effective system” of lorry checks?
Despite intense ministerial focus on inflatable dinghies, most unauthorised entrants to the UK have traditionally arrived by lorry. In 2019, more than 10,000 people were discovered to have arrived in the UK concealed in a vehicle; still more will have ...
13th December 2021Student visa sponsorship system (finally) being reviewed
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) is to inspect the relationship between the immigration system and the higher education sector. The call for evidence, which is open until 15 November 2021, confirms that the ICIBI will ...
5th November 2021Briefing: sea rescue of refugees in UK law and proposals for change
In a previous briefing we saw that customary international law, four international conventions and international human rights law all impose a duty on states to rescue those in distress at sea and to set up and maintain search and rescue services. We ...
11th October 2021How the NHS charging system is failing survivors of domestic abuse
Regulation 9 of The National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015 provides that the NHS in England cannot charge overseas visitors for treating a condition caused by torture, female genital mutilation, domestic violence or se ...
23rd July 2021Home Office refuses to explain secret sham marriage algorithm
The Home Office has rebuffed Public Law Project’s (PLP) latest attempt to find out more about the secret algorithmic criteria used to decide whether a proposed marriage should be investigated as a “sham”. Sham marriage investigatio ...
21st July 2021Briefing: the Nationality and Borders Bill, Part 3 (criminalising asylum seekers)
Part 3 of the Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 includes provisions relating to immigration offences and enforcement. It criminalises arriving in the UK, as well as formally entering, making it almost impossible to claim asylum in the UK without first ...
14th July 2021Briefing: what happens to EU citizens who miss the settled status deadline?
The Brexit vote, the triggering of Article 50, the failed May deal, the Johnson capitulation, the legal exit at the start of 2020 and the economic exit at the year’s end have all come and gone. On 30 June 2021 comes another milestone: the deadli ...
28th June 2021Can you get compensation if an immigration officer acts unlawfully?
This is the question addressed by Scotland’s Sheriff Appeal Court in Galbraith Trawlers Limited v Advocate General for Scotland [2021] SAC (Civ) 15. Fishing boats impounded over illegal immigration charges In 2015, an immigration officer issued lett ...
9th June 2021New data matching powers are a threat to migrant communities
The government’s threat to increase its use of data matching is now becoming a reality with plans to expand the National Fraud Initiative (NFI). If implemented, the proposals would extend data matching powers from their current use in tackling f ...
4th June 2021Anti-raids activism: what is the law on obstructing immigration officers?
The scenes in Glasgow last week, which saw a crowd prevent Immigration Enforcement from making off with two Indian men, got us thinking about the criminal offence of obstructing an immigration officer. Not, we hasten to add, because we think anyone sh ...
18th May 2021The Glasgow immigration raid was arbitrary: as are all such raids
From the outside looking in, initial immigration enforcement decisions like that in Glasgow last week to detain a person often seem opportunistic and random rather than strategic. The result is that the ‘wrong’ people end up being detained. We kno ...
16th May 2021The UK-India migration deal
The UK and India signed a non-binding agreement on migration this week. The basic ingredients are to beef up cooperation on removing unauthorised migrants in exchange for a minor liberalisation on youth mobility-type visas and some warm words on encou ...
7th May 2021Rounding up the rough sleepers… yet again
The latest episode of the Home Office’s dispute with rough sleeping migrants is here with the publication of the policy guidance for applying the “rough sleeping rule”. This article discusses some key points from both a housing and immigration p ...
26th April 2021Sponsor licence inspection visits back on
UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) has confirmed that with lockdown easing, it is resuming sponsor licence compliance visits. Initial visits will be focused on organisations that have a pending sponsor licence application. Confirming the resumption of vi ...
12th April 2021What is actually going on at the Home Office? A guide for journalists
We’ve seen a constant drip of leaks about the UK’s “broken” asylum system and how the upcoming Borders Bill or Sovereign Borders Bill or New Plan For Immigration or whatever it’s called will be the “biggest overhaul ...
23rd March 2021Home Office can’t catch human traffickers, inspection finds
The immigration authorities’ work on human trafficking and modern slavery produced just ten arrests and five prosecutions in two years, the immigration inspector has found. David Bolt’s report on the Home Office’s efforts in this are ...
8th March 2021Government must go beyond a press release to get undocumented migrants vaccinated
In response to growing pressure, the government announced on Monday that no immigration status checks will be carried out for migrants getting the coronavirus vaccination. While Downing Street’s press release focused on the lack of status checks ...
11th February 2021Important report on reform of immigration enforcement
The hostile environment should be reformed by selective repeal of key provisions, addressing Home Office culture and improved routes to regularisation, an influential think tank has found. Beyond the hostile environment, a report released yesterday by ...
10th February 2021Are “radical” and “moderate” positions on migrants’ rights conflicting or complementary?
There has been an interesting and mainly polite (if tense) discussion on and off Twitter in recent weeks about advocacy on migrants’ rights. This is in part linked to a short piece I wrote about deportations and a follow-up by Emma Harrison, dir ...
8th February 2021Why the migrants’ rights sector should care about big data
Last month, UN special rapporteur on racism Professor Tendayi Achiume raised concerns about the impact of digital technologies on human rights. Achiume’s comments come at a time when governments are relying more and more on digital tools to control ...
21st December 2020Home Office “didn’t take Windrush concerns seriously”, equality watchdog finds
The legal powers of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) have been much discussed in recent weeks. This month it is not the Labour Party in the figurative dock, but the more familiar presence of the Home Office. An EHRC report into the Wind ...
25th November 2020Online Right to Rent checks launch later this month
Right to Rent checks can be carried out online and in real time from 25 November 2020 onwards. Under the new scheme, landlords will be able to conduct checks on whether prospective tenants are permitted to rent using a Home Office webpage (not yet liv ...
9th November 2020“Compassionate” Home Office targets rough sleepers, again
Following the failings identified by the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, Priti Patel promised a “compassionate… people first” Home Office. But over the past few months the Home Office seems to have entertained only the most inhumane imm ...
29th October 2020Removal policy breaches common law right of access to a court
Hot on the heels of this summer’s confected controversy over last minute legal challenges to removals of asylum seekers, the Court of Appeal has ruled that the Home Office’s ‘removal window’ policy is unlawful because it denies ...
22nd October 2020As domestic abuse rises, the police are still betraying migrant victims
The rise in reports of domestic abuse during lockdown is horrifying. Worldwide, the situation is so bad that it’s been dubbed a “shadow pandemic“. In the UK, calls to domestic abuse helplines have risen by a terrifying 80%. In response, ...
8th October 2020Asylum seekers exposed to virus risk on removal flight as staff ditch covid precautions
Inspectors observing a Home Office charter flight taking asylum seekers to France and Germany have found that coronavirus precautions were not followed. The report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons also found that pain was deliberately inflicted on three ...
2nd October 2020Digital-only status for EU citizens “creates a real risk of harm”, experts warn
Digital-only residence permits could make it harder for migrants to access vital services like jobs and housing, a new report warns. Landlords and employers used to physical passports and residence permits may discriminate against migrants whose proof ...
1st October 2020Mandatory self-isolation law overlooks vulnerable migrants
In a bid to slow the surge in COVID-19 cases, Prime Minister Boris Johnson last night set out new restrictions in England which range from the wearing of masks by shop workers to limits on the number of people attending weddings. These measures come h ...
23rd September 2020