A shocking investigation has laid bare how minoritised communities are being illegally targeted by US-style immigration, compliance and enforcement (ICE) officers, led by the Home Office.
“Armed with sun guns and clad in stab vests, the 11-strong unit blocked off every entrance before moving in on their target: Mandira’s Kitchen,” an award-winning Indian restaurant in Surrey, the Guardian reported.
ICE agents “stormed the restaurant” last September with police but without a warrant, and demanded to see staff members’ passports. Chefs were separated and asked inappropriate questions about their personal lives while officers created a scene in the popular restaurant. Then, having found no evidence of anyone working illegally, they left.
This was one of tens of thousands of unjust Home Office raids on businesses across the UK since Labour came to power in July 2024.
ICE agents in the UK — why do we have them?
ICE officers were introduced as part of Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ policies in 2012, when she was home secretary. The Conservative politician aimed to make life in the UK unbearable for people living here without legal immigration status.
The West has seen increasingly vile rhetoric pushed by far-right politicians and pundits. This has deepened division in communities with racism unashamedly on full display. Furthermore, reports of aggressive tactics — and even murder —inflicted by ICE in the US are fueling fears in the UK about how similar tactics could be used against Brown and Black people.
Evidence of these traumatic raids will likely worsen the anxiety already felt by migrants as ICE agents reportedly:
singled out non-white, foreign-born workers.
‘They singled out non-white, foreign-born workers’: the restaurants raided by Britain’s version of ICE
A continuation of the Tory #HostileEnvironment that we’d hoped to see the back of and horribly reminiscent of MAGA
Not a vote-winner for Labour…
— Dr Tim Kinsella #FBPE @timkinsella.bsky.social (@51TJK) March 24, 2026
Mandira’s Kitchen owner, Mandira Moitra Sarkar, has a strong culinary reputation, having earned praise from fellow chefs Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver. Her ready meals were shown on a Channel 4 competition to source products for Aldi.
However, a successful business or persona, sadly, does not protect minoritised groups from racial harassment or discrimination. Sarkar told the Guardian she was “astounded” at what transpired, especially as it was likely in response to a flimsy tip-off.
The Guardian further reported:
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.
However, intelligence can range from “discreet drive-by surveillance” to the “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.
A pretty expensive hostile practice from the state with little value for the taxpayer, it must be said. Meanwhile, the Home Office owes Sarkar for parking on the premises without paying.
Sarkar: ‘It’s guilty until proven innocent’
The restaurateur gave her perspective on why she was likely targeted:
Oh, you’re brown and you’re running a food business? Of course you’ve got illegal immigrants. It’s guilty until proven innocent.
Seema Syed, advocacy and communications director at charity, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), agreed. She told the Guardian racial profiling is a factor for Home Office raids.
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”.
American business owner, Julian Denis, who owns a vegan Chinese restaurant in East London was also raided last year. His testimony highlights how it is less about whether you’re foreign and more about the colour of your skin.
Denis said ICE agents told him they were looking for “five to six illegal workers” while they:
singled out non-white, foreign-born workers for interrogation, scaring them with the possibility of being immediately jailed.
ICE’s cruelty doesn’t end there. LGBTQIA+ advocate, India Willoughby, recently spoke up about policy changes that will hurt the trans community too.
New power granted stating ICE can detain someone for “looking trans” . While held in indefinite detention, HRT will be denied.
The Gender Critical’s are trying to wipe trans out.
What @wesstreeting and @bphillipsonMP are doing to trans in the UK, is in tandem with MAGA US. pic.twitter.com/2s57sJLdzD
— India Willoughby (@IndiaWilloughby) March 13, 2026
Fuck ICE
Keir Starmer’s government has increased the number of raids by 77% since July 2024. Shockingly, the Guardian reports that the total number of raids under Starmer’s brief tenure already surpasses the entirety of raids carried out by the previous parliament.
This huge ramping up compared to previous right-wing governments is harrowing. After all, it further signifies how the Labour government is more interested in giving way to the hateful far right than they are in heeding any calls from the left of politics.
Its focus on foreign workers, who are cruelly scapegoated for problems they haven’t caused, signals the rising racism in British society. Meanwhile, the government gives white, heterosexual people the benefit of the doubt while denying that same presumption to minoritised groups.
It’s a deplorable step backward for British society and one that demands firm resistance.
Featured image via The Guardian/ Alicia Canter
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