Home Office Immigration Tactics Investigated

Controversial Home Office tactics to tackle illegal immigration - including a "go home or face arrest" advertising van campaign - are to be investigated by the equality watchdog.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is to probe operations including new spot checks by UK Border Agency staff on people's immigration status at London train and tube stations.

The Home Office has been accused of targeting non-whites and using "heavy-handed" tactics in the crackdown to tackle people working illegally in the UK, with witnesses claiming the checks appear to be only targeting members of ethnic minority communities.

A spokesman for the EHRC said: "The Commission is writing today to the Home Office about these reported operations, confirming that it will be examining the powers used and the justification for them, in order to assess whether unlawful discrimination took place.

"The letter will also ask questions about the extent to which the Home Office complied with its public sector equality duty when planning the recent advertising campaign targeted at illegal migration."

Sky News reporter James Banks said: "It is not just those who have been stopped who think these tactics are out of order, with some witnesses arguing the checks were prompted by race, not intelligence."

Phil O'Shea, who witnessed one of the operations earlier this week in north London, told the Kilburn Times: "I thought the behaviour of the immigration officers was heavy-handed and frightening.

"They appeared to be stopping and questioning every non-white person, many of whom were clearly ordinary Kensal Green residents going to work.

"When I queried what was going on I was threatened with arrest for obstruction and was told to 'crack on'."

Immigration enforcement officers have also arrested 139 suspected immigration offenders in a series of intelligence-led raids at locations including London, Durham, Manchester, Wales and Somerset - and details of the raids posted online by the Home Office.

Updates on the campaign and heavily pixelated images of some of the arrests of suspects have been tweeted by the Home Office with the hashtag #immigrationoffenders - with the tweets linked to pages on the Government website providing more information. Those who have no right to be in the UK face being thrown out.

The Home Office claims all the operations - including the spot checks - are intelligence-led, but this is disputed.

Immigration Minister Mark Harper told Sky News: "I make no apologies for our operations cracking down on illegal working operations - both on those working illegally and those employing them, but I absolutely refute the suggestion that we are targeting people because of their race, or we are doing racial profiling - we are doing nothing of the sort.

"We are using intelligence to target our operations. We can only lawfully do that if we have intelligence that suggests we are going to encounter immigration offenders, and I am confident having reviewed our operations that we are absolutely operating within the law."

Concerns have been raised, and Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, has written to Home Secretary Theresa May demanding an investigation into the spot checks which he said violated "fundamental freedoms".

Shadow immigration minister Chris Bryant said: "Intelligence-led operations to remove illegal immigrants are to be welcomed. Racial profiling is not."

Newly-appointed labour peer Doreen Lawrence has pledged to speak out over the stop-and-check operations in her new role.

Asked about the claims of focus on non-whites, the mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence said: "I'm sure there's illegal immigrants from all countries, but why would you focus that on people of colour? - and I think racial profiling is coming into it."

Mrs Lawrence told ITV1's Daybreak programme that stop-and-search has always been in the forefront of her mind, and she that she has campaigned on the issue for years.

Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council, told Sky's Boulton & Co that based on the complaints he had received from people, including white residents, who had witnessed the spot checks, he believed the checks did amount to "racial profiling because the people that have been targeted in Brent are predominantly black and Asian people". "Absolutely, it is random," he added.

Tony Smith, former head of UKBA, told the programme: "The guidance that's given to officers is very clear that it's not okay to profile anybody on the grounds of race or behaviour."

Writing in The Independent, Dave Garratt, the chief executive of charity Refugee Action, warned that the operations could "incite racial tensions".

"Over the last few weeks we've seen some very visible signs of the Government's 'hostile environment' crusade. There have been vans out on the streets with threatening slogans and, reportedly, non-white people being visibly stopped and searched," he wrote.

"The Home Office is responsible for community cohesion. Yet we are increasingly seeing what appears to be hostility towards non-white immigration, which will do nothing but incite racial tensions and divisions within otherwise rich and diverse communities."

A protest against the spot checks and raids took place in Southall, West London, on Thursday. Members of the not-for-profit organisation Southall Black Sisters confronted two immigration officers in the area.

A Home Office spokesman defended the tactics: "We make no apology for enforcing our immigration laws and our officers carry out hundreds of operations like this every year around London.

"Where we find people who are in the UK illegally, we will remove them."

The department rejected claims that its tweets with the hashtag #immigrationoffenders may have prejudiced cases, because the suspects have not been identified.

And it was unable to state how many of those arrested will face deportation, with some cases taking 72 hours to resolve and others much longer, it said.