A British government bearing the name ‘Labour’ has revelled in the results of a mass clampdown on society’s least privileged workers – those it says are working illegally in breach of immigration rules. The statement – jointly written by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn – has a particular focus on the raids carried out in Northern Ireland by the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement goons.
They boast of how:
…187 raids were carried out in 2025, leading to 234 arrests – a 76% and 169% rise respectively compared to 2024.
Benn said that:
This Government has increased enforcement to record levels, and the message is clear: there is no place for those flouting the law.
That’s a bit rich coming from a government that is breaking the law in numerous ways, including but not limited to: clamping down on protest rights; maintaining the Tories’ pitiful international aid budget; failing disabled people; and continuing to participate in an apartheid pseudo-state’s holocaust.
Sadistic Labour report rejoices at crackdown on most vulnerable
Mahmood and Benn, with a rather classist tone, gleefully describe cracking down on:
…dodgy businesses…such as nail bars, car washes, barbers and takeaway shops.
There’s no doubt these are common sites for immigrants to work, often for a pittance under exploitative management.
Nonetheless, most will have chosen to do so due to being forced to subsist on virtually nothing while waiting on a decision by the underfunded and massively inefficient Home Office immigration system. Asylum seekers are forced to get by on:
£49.18 per person on a payment card for food, clothing and toiletries (or £9.95 per person if your accommodation provides your meals)
That’s right – less than a tenner per week in many cases. Essentially prison wages for a prison-style life, stuck in often dire accommodation with nothing to do, maybe thousands of miles from home, and potentially with a pack of neanderthals outside trying to kill you.
For the first 12 months of their claim, applicants for leave to remain are forbidden from working. Often they are delayed even longer while waiting for the Home Office’s glacial system to respond to their request to work.
If the government don’t like illegal working, the solution is simple – allow asylum seekers to work legally from day one, and properly fund Home Office immigration processing so claims can be verified swiftly. Even Maggie Thatcher allowed those seeking international protection to work without a 12 month wait. As the graphic below from the Centre for Global Development shows, Britain is out in front when it comes to draconian policies restricting the rights of asylum seekers in the employment market.
Farage plans even tougher assault on rights
Overall, the report hails “17,400 raids” which “led to more than 12,300 arrests”. This was apparently made possible by a:
…£5m funding boost last year for Immigration Enforcement, to target and pursue illegal working criminality.
I’m sure we’re all very glad that’s where our taxes are going, rather than on MRI machines or fixing crumbling schools. In further money-down-the-toilet news, Labour remind of us of exciting plans to piss it away on:
…introducing digital ID, which will be mandatory to prove someone’s right to work by the end of Parliament.
As reported previously, any sort of ‘Brit Card’ scheme is likely to go down very poorly in the North of Ireland. So too proposals from Reform leader Nigel Farage to bring in something even closer to ICE – a “UK Deportation Command” enforcement unit with the aim of carrying out mass deportations.
Kemi Badenoch has described ICE’s tactics – which now include shooting peaceful activists in the face – as a “successful approach”. If a Brit Card is a bad idea, sending a new militarised British force into Northern Ireland is about as ill-advised as it gets.
Targeting of migrants a distraction from economic failure
Labour’s announcement on their campaign of raids further emboldens this march towards authoritarianism. It’s all evidence of a neoliberal order well and truly circling the drain. That things have regressed on asylum policy from the Thatcher era tells us an important truth – at least the political class then offered the pretence of claiming our economic model had the potential to provide a decent standard of living. Some maybe even believed it.
Now they don’t even do that. The inevitable tendency of capitalism is towards fascism. It concentrates wealth in a few hands, then that wealth captures political power. Ordinary people see their lives get worse as only the interests of the wealthy are prioritised. When revolt starts to emerge, as we saw in the 1930s, the system’s best options for self-preservation are fostering of hate and war.
Back then, Jewish people were the main targets of appalling slanders. Today’s targets of confected hate are Muslims and asylum seekers. Britain’s political class intends to drive us into war, and send off young people to die in Ukraine. You’ll be less worried about finding a dentist or paying your rent if you’re lying bleeding to death in a trench near Mariupol.
Asylum seekers are the canaries in this coal mine, and it’s going to require our solidarity to protect them. The sooner we see more scenes like this one, the better:
Featured image via the Canary
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