By Vanessa Topp
“We are very much aware of the government’s plans and we will try whenever possible to disrupt these forcible removals.”
quote from a protester at Peckham Hotel in South London interviewed for the Guardian
“We will continue to remove those with no right to be here. No amount of chanting, drum banging or tyre-slashing by a noisy few will prevent us doing what is necessary.”
quote from James Cleverly, Home Secretary in response to the protests
The UK’s political climate and legislative landscape has become increasingly hostile to migration, with the government passing restrictive new legislation such as the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the Illegal Migration Act 2023, and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. This trend criminalises migration and has now started to extend beyond this to target expressions of support for migrants and dissent against the increasingly restrictive migration policies. Each of these legislative developments supports the government’s stated aim of reducing irregular migration by framing it both as a threat to security and a criminal act. Despite having received widespread criticism for being incompatible with the UK’s international law obligations (for example, those enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings) and facing legal challenges, the government has remained steadfast in its path.
The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 introduced a new regime for irregular migrants that included, amongst other measures, more severe criminal offenses intended to deter irregular entry or facilitation thereof. It also significantly raised the thresholds for survivors of modern slavery to have their status recognised and access support and protection in the UK. The Illegal Migration Act 2023 goes considerably further than the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 in supporting the UK government’s stated aim to “prevent [the] asylum system and legal framework being abused by those with no right to be here”. Notably, the Illegal Migration Act 2023 seeks to prevent those who have travelled through safe countries to enter the UK via irregular routes from having their asylum claim considered. It also deems inadmissible to the modern slavery system anyone who entered irregularly via public order disqualification. This means that an asylum or modern slavery claim made by anyone who entered the UK without prior lawful permission through irregular means such as by crossing the channel on a small boat (the predominant method), by hiding in a lorry or otherwise risks being deemed inadmissible. This is in contrast with the reality that safe and regular routes are available to asylum seekers only under extremely specific and limited circumstances. Indeed, since the Illegal Migration Act received royal assent on 20 July 2023 no one who arrived via small boat on or after this date has had their asylum claim granted. In the absence of safe and legal routes, however, such irregular arrivals continue despite these deterrents.
Furthermore, while the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 provided the Home Secretary with discretionary power to remove ‘illegal migrants’, the Illegal Migration Act 2023 establishes a binding legal duty for their removal. The duty to remove would entail the removal to a third country of individuals who entered the UK without immigration permission, after the ascent of the Illegal Migration Act 2022, who passed through another safe country, and who do not have the required leave to enter or remain. This is not yet in force. Finally, the Safety of Rwanda Act 2024 – which has the stated purpose of ‘deter[ring] unlawful migration, and in particular migration by unsafe and illegal routes’ effectively recognises Rwanda as a safe country for removal under provisions made by the immigration acts. This was passed despite a Court of Appeals judgment upheld by the UK Supreme Court in November 2023 which declared that Rwanda was not a safe country to which asylum seekers could be removed which cited Rwanda’s poor human rights records and noted concerns that the Rwandan asylum system was inadequate to provide fair and accurate decisions, placing asylum seekers at risk of refoulement.
The Prime Minister has since called for a general election and stated that no deportation flights will take off ahead of polling day on 4 July 2024, with the first announced deportation flights scheduled for 24 July 2024 (though this will likely depend on who wins the election). However, in early May 2024 the Home Office launched a major surprise operation to round-up and detain asylum seekers, seemingly in preparation for deportations to Rwanda. While government officials did not release exact figures, it appears that dozens were detained in immigration detention centres across the country following these operations. In response, protesters immediately began gathering outside Home Office immigration centres in Croydon, Peckham, Solihull, Margate, and Salford (and elsewhere) in an attempt to block access to buildings and prevent asylum seekers from being taken onto immigration removal vans. General street demonstrations also took place in many other cities across the UK, with activists protesting both the ongoing deportation round-ups and the overall inhumane nature of the Rwanda Plan.
At least 45 activists were arrested for wilful obstruction of a highway during the protests in Peckham, where hundreds had gathered in an attempt to block asylum seekers being collected from a London hotel to be taken to the Bibi Stockholm Barge. In Elephant and Castle, 10 activists were arrested and 5 people were removed from a hostel to the Bibi Stockholm. In Solihull, a further 13 protesters were arrested on suspicion of causing a breach of the peace. Some of those present at these locations included activists and organisers from Black Lives Matter, Lambeth Anti-Raids Network, and individuals working with charities supporting refugees and asylum seekers. A founder of the charity Lewisham Donation Hub statedthat he had attempted to defuse the situation with police and had come down to make sure that two volunteers working with his organisation, themselves asylum seekers who had been threatened with being sent to the Bibi Stockholm, were able to leave the hotel in Peckham. These kind of crackdowns on protest movements are facilitated by the recent significant tightening of protest laws under the Public Order Act 2023 which included expanded criminal protest offenses. In addition, the Public Order Act 2023 lowered the threshold of what is considered serious disruption for these new offenses and extended the power of police to impose conditions on protests or shut them down.
Aside from these most recent headline cases, there are several other prominent examples of activists protesting deportations and seeking to block the removal of asylum seekers being arrested in the UK. For example, in May of 2021 several hundreds of protesters gathered in Kenmure Street in Glasgow to prevent an immigration removal van carrying two men from leaving the street following an immigration enforcement raid. Three protesters were arrested in connection with the demonstration at Kenmure Street on charges which included resisting, obstructing or hindering officers carrying out their duties by trying to lie under a vehicle as well as acting in a threatening or abusive manner towards the police. All three pleaded not guilty and were later cleared of the charges. Similarly, in March of 2017 seventeen protesters were arrested under counter-terror legislation after breaking into Stansted airport to block a deportation flight. Although they were initially convicted in 2018, the conviction was later reversed on appeal due to the court’s finding that the seriousness of the offence did not match the nature of the act, which had not been intended to endanger the safe operation of the airport.
In a context in which the government pursues a policy of criminalising irregular migration and framing it as a threat, it is perhaps no surprise that activist dissent against such policies in the form of protest and blocking of deportations is met with a harsh response. The UK government anti-migrant rhetoric is then further reflected in right-leaning UK tabloid media where statements such as those following are commonly found:
Ultimately this kind of rhetoric employed by the media can be co-opted by the government and used as a means to justify or gain support for its policies. See for example former Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s talk of “stopping an invasion” and claims of “heightened levels of criminality when related to the people who’ve come on boats”. This type of threatening language when employed both by government and media is not only dehumanising to migrants, it also risks creating a narrative which legitimises the application of harsh measures against those who stand in solidarity with migrants and thus find themselves in tension with the government. This apparent connection between the criminalisation of irregular migration and the criminalisation of anti-deportation protests, as a means of stifling dissent against government policy, should be explored further.
Human Rights Centre Blog 