Sunday, March 29, 2026
Our version of Trump's ICE under fire
Earlier this week, the Guardian carried a detailed feature on how the Home Office enforces its policies. They said that officers have searched thousand of businesses in search of illegal workers, reporting on one raid at Mandira's Kitchen in Guildford last year:
The raid is one of more than 17,400 on businesses carried out since Labour came to power in July 2024 – a 77% increase on the year before and almost as many as in the entire previous parliament. The government says the drive has led to the highest number of arrests for illegal working since records began, but critics say the crackdown goes far beyond the party’s manifesto pledge of a “fair and properly managed immigration system”.
While the UK’s Ice teams were set up in 2013 as part of Theresa May’s “hostile environment” policy, Labour has been using the increased number of raids to front much of the Home Office’s media output. In January, the Home Office set up a TikTok account, @SecureBordersUK, to show Ice officers raiding a market, a car wash and a nail bar. One video, which appears to show people struggling in open water during small-boat crossings, contains a stark message: “To the migrants who come to the UK illegally: you will face deportation or removal.”
Most businesses raided by Ice don’t know why they were targeted. Anonymous tipoffs, which can be made online, appear to be behind many of the raids (including the one on Mandira’s Kitchen). Kevin Barker, a former Ice officer and the director of the paralegal firm Immigration Compliance Ltd, says that while raids are always “intelligence-led”, a tipoff can be enough to trigger one.
There are steps between a tipoff being filed and a raid being carried out, Barker says. Surveillance is sometimes used, including “discreet drive-by surveillance”. Barker says Ice will also “see if there’s any other allegations or previous immigration raids to the business” and investigate if a name is given. But more often than not, he says, “there are no names mentioned – they just have a suspicion of illegal workers”. The nature of anonymity means a tipoff can relate to a personal or commercial grievance. Often, it’s “competitors within the local area” filling out the forms, he says.
Moitra Sarkar holds a sponsor licence, which allows her to employ students or workers who might not normally have the right to work in the UK. “It was all very intimidating. Oh, you’re brown and you’re running a food business? Of course you’ve got illegal immigrants. It’s guilty until proven innocent,” she says.
Racial profiling is a factor, says Seema Syeda, the advocacy and communications director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which provides legal advice for those targeted by raids. She says the high number of arrests doesn’t paint the full picture. In 2025, Ice officers carried out 12,791 illegal-working raids and made 8,971 arrests. However, the Home Office’s figures show that only a quarter of those arrested (2,251) were detained and 12% (1,087) left the UK, either by force or voluntarily. Syeda says she has seen “many cases where people are raided, arrested and then released”. It is, she says, “very clear to us that this is a performative act”.
The article includes claims that the UK ICE often exceed their powers but also that the force has far fewer powers than ICE in the US, but that this may not remain the case:
Reform UK and the Conservatives have announced plans to create agencies modelled on ICE, should they win power. However, the increase in raids hasn’t come without opposition on the ground. Anti-raid groups are “springing up”, says Syeda. In January, a group in Lewisham, south London, alerted people to a car wash raid. When protesters told those being approached by Ice officers of their rights, no one was arrested.
Whereas the work carried out by this agency is ncessary, I do think that there needs to be greater public scrutiny of their work to ensure that things don't get out of hand.
