Police state

Excuse me... Are you British?
ID cards
Free seminar: Saturday Nov 20th on Immigration Surveillance

"The impact of these spot checks should not be underestimated. Immigration officials (clad in body armour and carrying handcuffs) question suspects for up to 40 minutes, in full view of other passengers, while their details are checked on wireless laptops and fingerprint-scanning technology linked to national databases."

The police and immigration services have combined in a new "street sweep" operation that targets passengers on the London Underground and passers-by in the street. Their crime? Looking foreign. By Tom Wall

Earlier this year a white British friend of mine, with dark skin and hair, was stopped by an immigration official outside a north London Tube station. The man questioned him about his journey before letting him go. Later the same day he returned to the station and was again approached - this time he revealed he was a journalist and almost immediately the official hurried away.

"As soon as I told him I worked for a local paper he let me go. It really pissed me off because he made no effort to explain who he was or what he was doing," fumed my friend. "Maybe I looked foreign: why else did he stop me?"

Others have not been so lucky. The Home Office boasts it has picked up 1,000 immigration offenders during 235 joint police and immigration operations nationally between May 2003 and July 2004, but insists that "foreign-looking people" have not been targeted.

Officially, suspects are approached by ticket inspectors or the police (in London, where the vast majority of operations take place, this is the British Transport Police on the Underground; on the street, it would be the Metropolitan Police). Once they have been apprehended, immigration officials can question them. There is no record, however, of how many innocent passengers have been pulled aside and questioned in these sweeps. Nor does anybody know if black, Asian- or eastern European-looking people have been targeted. The official guidelines for these "street operations" (as the Home Office calls them) state that details of each stop should be noted - but the Home Office says the data is not collated centrally because it is impractical and expensive. Although the police publish an overall ethnic breakdown of who they stop and search, they do not provide figures on individual operations. Nor does the Immigration Service have detailed figures.

These joint police and immigration operations are part of renewed government efforts to clamp down on failed asylum-seekers and illegal immigration. A British Transport Police detective told me they perform at least several joint operations a month. In the run up to Christmas, the police and immigration service are carrying out regular sweeps of London's West End stations. Those arrested are held in giant mobile custody units nearby in Marble Arch.

One veteran ticket inspector, who has taken part in countless joint operations, witnessed immigration officials targeting ethnic minorities. "Just over a month ago I saw officials approaching black, Asian- and eastern European-looking people, at Seven Sisters station, before the police had spoken to them," says Keith Babalola, a revenue control inspector of 14 years. "They were more careful than normal, but sometimes they couldn't help themselves. I saw them stop passengers whose tickets we had just checked because they had foreign accents."

This is happening even though London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, has forbidden random immigration stop checks on Transport for London property.

Babalola has good reason to suspect the Immigration Service. He and another black colleague were themselves interrogated by immigration officials during an operation at Shepherd's Bush station. "We weren't the only inspectors in plain clothes but we were the only black inspectors in plain clothes. We were approached and asked what we were doing," he says. "It's like we live in a police state. The only place they should be doing that is a port of entry to a country. How long before we see them at Tesco?"

Another ticket inspector, who has also worked closely with immigration officials, told me he had seen immigration officials target particular stations. "On one occasion we visited North Acton station because there is a job centre nearby where lots of eastern Europeans go. I saw immigration officials approach eastern European-looking people and ask questions," says the man who does not wish to be named.

An RMT union representative explained ticket inspectors across the Tube network had complained about immigration officials targeting ethnic minorities: "The matter was raised with management after inspectors on the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria lines complained about officials stopping black, Asian and eastern European people."

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants says it has received numerous complaints about immigration officials stopping ethnic minorities and anybody they consider foreign in stations across the capital. A spokesman for the group says people have complained about an immigration operation targeting Bangladeshi travellers outside Whitechapel station last month.

Official guidelines say individuals cannot be stopped purely on the basis of their perceived nationality or race. The same guidelines also state that operations are carried out on the Underground because failed asylum-seekers and other immigration offenders use public transport. It is tempting to add they also walk in parks and shop in shops like most Londoners.

The Home Office insists these joint operations are intelligence driven and only high crime areas are visited. "Immigration officers do not simply approach anyone who looks or sounds foreign. They approach people who display certain types of behaviour which indicates they warrant greater scrutiny, like running away," a Home Office spokesman helpfully added.

The impact of these spot checks should not be underestimated. Immigration officials (clad in body armour and carrying handcuffs) question suspects for up to 40 minutes, in full view of other passengers, while their details are checked on wireless laptops and fingerprint-scanning technology linked to national databases. It is not for nothing the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants describes it as "humiliating and intrusive". A gay Jamaican student told me he is scared to travel by Tube after his friends were stopped. Many in the Muslim community are equally fearful. Saqid Khan from the Muslim Council of Britain says that, given widespread Islamophobia, he is concerned that Muslim travellers will be targeted. His fears have some basis: between 2002 and 2003 the number of Asian people stopped by the police increased by 300 per cent.

None of this affects the many white Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans who have overstayed their visas. They are more likely to receive helpful directions than intrusive questions as they travel. But, then, they were never the problem: this crackdown is directed against the "unwashed hordes" from the south and east. Immigration officials can already discriminate under the Race Relations Amendment Act. In 2001 the Home Office allowed officials to "prioritise" particular groups such as Tamils, Kurds and Roma at ports of entry. Is it any surprise they discriminate elsewhere?

"The Government rightly condemns those who indulge in racial discrimination, yet it is not prepared to apply those standards to itself or its officials," says Keith Best, the chief executive of Immigration Advisory Service. "It is appalling that the government is putting its own officials into a position in which they are likely to act in a racially discriminatory way, thereby angering and embarrassing many non-white British citizens and those with a right of abode in the UK."

Unperturbed by such criticisms, the Home Office says police forces outside the capital are free to invite the Immigration Service to take part in joint operations. Although London is by far the main location - similar operations are beginning to take place up and down the country. Immigration officials in Yorkshire have taken part in police traffic operations. In Leicester, factories have been visited by immigration officials and the police. Indeed, most urban forces now work closely with the Immigration Service.

This co-operation is part of a growing criminalisation of immigration. More and more immigrants are being detained without trial. Workplaces and even marriage ceremonies in immigrant communities are being raided - last year the Immigration Service raided 60 weddings and made 110 arrests. More and more immigrants are being deported. The Institute of Race Relations fears these trends may lead to a repeat of the joint immigration and police operation that killed Joy Gardner in 1993. The 40-year-old black woman died after being bound and gagged by police who had come to serve a deportation order on her.

Elsewhere in Europe these types of operations have damaged community relations. Since 1993 the French police have had the power to stop anyone suspected of being foreign "as long as the basis for that belief was not racial origin" (which is remarkably similar to Home Office justifications). Such checks are carried out regularly on the Paris Metro and in other public places. Not surprisingly, Arabs and Africans are stopped rather more than American tourists. A spokeswoman for GISTI, a French immigrant group, told me it has got so bad it is not advisable for black people to travel on the Metro without identity papers.

The RMT transport union is keen to avoid such a situation on the Tube. Its regional organiser, Bobby Law, says that the union will take action unless its members are withdrawn from joint police and immigration operations.

My friend survived his encounter with the Immigration Service. But how many other innocent passengers have been pulled aside as they push through Tube barriers, to then face an interrogation of up to 40 minutes? There can be no doubt that for these people looking "foreign" made life difficult. Indeed, it is all too often their only crime.

Source: http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

Excuse me... Are you British?
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/are-you-british-.shtml

ID cards
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/privacy/id-cards.shtml

Free seminar: Immigration Surveillance
Migrant Workers’ Rights, Immigration Surveillance: the Challenges for 2005
Saturday 20th Nov 2004
http://www.asylumpolicy.info/surviellance.htm

http://www.asylumpolicy.info/policestate.htm