Labour’s shadow immigration minister has accused the Home Office of racial profiling after immigration officers at several train and underground stations in London were seen ‘stopping and questioning every non-white person’ about their right to remain in the country.
Chris Bryant warned that, if the officers had been stopping people purely because of their skin colour, then this would be illegal. Mr Bryant said that the Home Secretary, Theresa May, must ‘establish straight away whether the rules preventing racial profiling are being enforced. Intelligence-led operations to tackle illegal immigration are right; racial profiling is not’.
The swoops took place last Thursday (August 1) at Kensal Green and Cricklewood underground stations in north-west London and at Walthamstow and Stratford stations in east London.
According to witnesses, officers appeared to be stopping people of colour but ignoring white passengers. One white passenger at Kensal Green, Phil O’Shea, claims to have observed officers ‘stopping and questioning every non-white person’. He claims that he asked the officers what they were doing and was threatened with arrest.
Asking: “What about white Australians and New Zealanders who may have overstayed their visas?” Muhammed Butt, the leader of the local council in Brent, described the raids as leaving ‘a nasty taste in the mouth’ and being ‘intimidating’ as well as ‘racist and divisive’.
Alex Wheatle, a black Briton, wrote in The Independent that the raids are politically motivated and designed to win support among right wing Conservatives who might otherwise desert the Party and vote for the more extreme UK Independence Party. He says that the raids are ‘a blatant infringement on the human rights [of those stopped]’ and calls on Theresa May to explain ‘why only black or Asian people were targeted’. He adds that he thinks it likely that Mrs May is seeking to appeal to certain anti-immigration sections of the Conservative Party including some right wing Conservative MPs, before challenging David Cameron, for the leadership of the party.
The Home Office also faces criticism that its terminology prejudges the guilt of people arrested after immigration raids around the country and may be guilty of contempt of court. The Home Office Twitter feed features pixelated photos of arrests in London, Wales, the north of England and Somerset, with accompanying text referring to ‘immigration offenders’.
Legal experts say those arrested are entitled to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Calling them offenders presupposes their guilt.
