Category Archives: Home Office

‘A special day’: how a Glasgow community halted immigration raid

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Activists and local people tell how they forced the release of two men detained in an enforcement van

It was just after 9am on Thursday and he was finishing breakfast when the callout came. Kenmure Street’s “Van Man” – the activist who spent nearly eight hours squeezed underneath an immigration enforcement van to prevent the detention of two men on Glasgow’s southside – was on his bike in minutes.

“It’s not often you can catch raids in the act like this, but the southside has a lot of folks pulling together,” he said. “The only way that day could have ended was with our neighbours’ release; there were simply too many local people standing in the street for the police to have taken the van away. The strategy does work – and we want the world to understand that it was the people on the streets who won that victory, not the politicians.”

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Glasgow protesters rejoice as men freed after immigration van standoff

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Hundreds of people surrounded vehicle men were held in and chanted ‘these are our neighbours, let them go’

Campaigners have hailed a victory for Glaswegian solidarity and told the Home Office “you messed with the wrong city” as two men detained by UK Immigration Enforcement were released back into their community after a day of protest.

Police Scotland intervened to free the men after a tense day-long standoff between immigration officials and hundreds of local residents, who surrounded their van in a residential street on the southside of Glasgow to stop the detention of the men during Eid al-Fitr.

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EU citizens arriving in UK being locked up and expelled

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Europeans with job interviews tell of detentions and expulsions despite rules allowing non-visa holders to attend interviews

EU citizens are being sent to immigration removal centres and held in airport detention rooms as the UK government’s “hostile environment” policy falls on them after Brexit, according to campaigners and travellers interviewed by the Guardian.

Europeans with job interviews are among those being denied entry and locked up. They have spoken of being subjected to the traumatic and humiliating experience of expulsion, despite Home Office rules that explicitly allow non-visa holders to attend interviews.

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Cruel, paranoid, failing: inside the Home Office

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Something is badly wrong at the heart of one of Britain’s most important ministries. How did it become so broken?

For the thousands of people who end up on the wrong side of the Home Office each year, there is often a sudden moment of disbelief. This can’t be happening, people tell themselves. They can’t do this, can they?

For Ruhena Miah, a sales assistant born and raised in the West Midlands, this moment came when she received a letter saying that if she wanted to marry the man she loved, she would have to move to Bangladesh. For Tayjay Thompson, a young man convicted of a drugs offence when he was 17, it was when he was told he would be deported to Jamaica, a country he’d left as a toddler. For Monique Hawkins, a Dutch software engineer, it was when her application for a residency permit was rejected, despite the fact she had lived in the UK for 24 years. For Omar, a refugee from Afghanistan (who asked me not to use his real name), it was when he stepped off the plane at Heathrow and discovered that he was being taken to a building that looked to him very much like a prison.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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More trafficking victims facing forcible removal from UK under rule change

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Rights groups warn many more survivors face being locked up after MPs back Home Office change

More victims of trafficking will be locked up in detention and forcibly removed from the UK after MPs approved a change in Home Office rules relating to this vulnerable group, campaigners have warned.

MPs recently confirmed what is known as a statutory instrument. This change in rules relating to the detention of trafficking victims comes into force on 25 May and will require them to provide a higher standard of proof that they should not be detained.

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UK accused of stranding vulnerable refugees after Brexit

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Exclusive: Torture survivors and lone children stuck in Greece and Italy after Home Office ‘deliberately’ ends cooperation on family reunions

The Home Office has been accused of failing to reunite vulnerable refugees who have the right to join family in the UK under EU law, leaving lone children and torture survivors stranded.

The government faced widespread criticism when it announced that family reunion law would no longer apply after the UK left the EU, and it promised that cases under way on that date would be allowed to proceed.

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Home Office sued by asylum seeker over baby’s death

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Woman claims asylum housing staff ignored pleas for help when she was in pain while 35 weeks pregnant

A woman whose baby died is suing the Home Office for negligence over claims that staff at her asylum accommodation refused to call an ambulance when she was pregnant and bleeding.

The woman, who has asked to be named Adna, sought asylum in the UK in January 2020 after fleeing Angola. She was seven months pregnant when she was brought by police to Brigstock House asylum-support accommodation in Croydon.

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Watchdog steps in over secrecy about UK women in Syria stripped of citizenship

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Exclusive: Home Office refusal to disclose how many women are in same position as Shamima Begum prompts action

The Home Office’s refusal to disclose the number of women who, like Shamima Begum, have been deprived of their British citizenship after travelling to join Islamic State is under investigation by the information commissioner.

The watchdog said it would step in after the government refused to share the data with a human rights group concerned about the conditions of British women and children detained in camps in north-east Syria, where conditions are dire.

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Keeping an eye on the force: life in the real Line of Duty

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As the popular BBC drama returns, a former crime reporter takes a look at the reality of fighting police corruption

Last week, an officer from South Wales police received formal notification that they were under investigation regarding their dealings with a man who had been arrested and held overnight in a cell in Cardiff.

The suspect had been released from custody the following morning then found dead shortly afterwards. The investigation is to focus on whether the level of force used by the officer was “necessary, proportionate and reasonable” in the circumstances.

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Specialist Covid infection control scientist faces threat of deportation from UK

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Charles Oti should be in his NHS job fighting the virus. Instead, the Home Office wants to send him to Nigeria

An infection control specialist who has been offered a job as a senior NHS biomedical scientist to help tackle the pandemic is facing deportation by the Home Office, prompting fresh calls for a more “humane” approach to skilled migrants.

The government has refused Charles Oti, 46, from Nigeria the right to remain in the UK even though the job he was offered is among the government’s most sought-after skilled positions.

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Cressida Dick refuses to quit over vigil policing and dismisses ‘armchair critics’

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Metropolitan police chief stands firm after criticism from London mayor and home secretary

Britain’s most senior police chief defied pressure to resign as she dismissed “armchair” critics amid widespread outrage over officers manhandling women who were mourning the killing of Sarah Everard.

Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, was publicly rebuked by the home secretary, Priti Patel, and the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, for providing an unsatisfactory explanation of why police broke up a vigil for Everard in London’s Clapham Common on Saturday, near where she was allegedly abducted before being murdered.

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UK’s anti-terror chief fears rights group boycott threatens Prevent review

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Neil Basu says move to protest appointment of William Shawcross could harm process

Britain’s best chance of reducing terrorist violence risks being damaged amid a huge backlash to the government’s choice of William Shawcross to lead a review of Prevent, the country’s top counter-terrorism officer has told the Guardian.

Assistant commissioner Neil Basu’s comments came after key human rights and Muslim groups announced a boycott of the official review of Prevent, which aims to stop Britons being radicalised into violent extremism.

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UK immigration officials ‘have had no information’ about hotel quarantine

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Border staff not briefed about even basics of Covid protection system starting on Monday, says union

Immigration officials expected to enforce a mandatory quarantine intended to protect the UK from new coronavirus variants have not been briefed on even the basics about how the system will work, little more than 48 hours before it begins, the Guardian has been told.

The Immigration Services Union (ISU), which represents many of the Home Office’s immigration officers, said that before the start on Monday of the new policy, staff had not been told if they would be expected to check for arrivals who had not properly declared their status, or when and how those obliged to quarantine would be taken to hotels.

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Home Office admits 15,000 people deleted from police records

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Policing minister, Kit Malthouse, reveals figures a month after data blunder was first revealed

A blunder led to the records of more than 15,000 people being deleted in their entirety from the Police National Computer, the Home Office has admitted. News of the data loss emerged last month, but on Monday the government put numbers on what had been erased.

The policing minister, Kit Malthouse, said in a written statement that a total of 209,550 offence records relating to 112,697 individuals had been deleted from the PNC, which is run by the Home Office and used by forces across the UK. That included the entire records of 15,089 people.

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Slavery survivors moved ‘without notice, without reason’ in London lockdown

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Despite stay at home orders, vulnerable asylum seekers in Home Office accommodation say they were given as little as a day’s notice

Modern slavery survivors with young children were among refugees allegedly forced to move accommodation in London with as little as one day’s notice during coronavirus lockdowns this winter.

Women who are among the UK’s most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers said they were given just 24 hours to pack before being moved from accommodation provided by the Home Office, often having to travel long distances across the capital, in late December and January.

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EU citizens offered financial incentives to leave UK

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European nationals added to voluntary returns scheme, which can include flights and up to £2,000 for resettlement

EU citizens are being offered financial incentives to leave the UK, the Guardian has learned, months before the deadline to apply for settled status.

From 1 January EU citizens have quietly been added to the government’s voluntary returns scheme where financial support is offered as an encouragement to return to their country of origin.

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Summer holidays cancelled? UK faces big decision on border

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Stricter controls appear likely, with government’s approach in stark contrast to that during first Covid wave

Slumped on the sofa after another day of home schooling, many families will have longingly eyed adverts for getaways: sun, sandy beaches and glittering pools, a much-needed reward after a year in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.

But ministers are becoming increasingly concerned they may have to ask the British public to sacrifice their hopes of a break abroad this summer. On Thursday, Priti Patel became the latest cabinet minister to say it was too soon to book an overseas break; Matt Hancock has already announced he is going to Cornwall.

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Asylum seeker housing conditions under scrutiny at third ex-military site

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Allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises at RAF Coltishall in Norfolk

A third former military site being used as temporary housing for asylum seekers is facing allegations of poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises, it has emerged.

The Home Office has been housing asylum seekers in a former officers’ mess at RAF Coltishall, north of Norwich, since April last year. The Norfolk site has not received as much scrutiny as two similar facilities, Napier Barracks in Kent and Penally Barracks in Pembrokeshire, which have been dogged by allegations of cover-ups, poor access to healthcare and legal advice, and crowded conditions.

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