While the UK’s Ice teams were set up in 2013 as part of Theresa May’s
“hostile environment” policy, Labour has been using the increased number of raids to front much of the Home Office’s media output. In January,
the Home Office set up a TikTok account, @SecureBordersUK, to show Ice officers raiding
a market, a
car wash and a
nail bar.
One video, which appears to show people struggling in open water during small-boat crossings, contains a stark message:
“To the migrants who come to the UK illegally: you will face deportation or removal.”
Most businesses raided by Ice don’t know why they were targeted. Anonymous tipoffs, which can be made online, appear to be behind many of the raids (including the one on Mandira’s Kitchen*). 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.
Racial profiling is a factor, says Seema Syeda, the advocacy and communications director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which provides legal advice for those targeted by raids. She says the high number of arrests doesn’t paint the full picture. In 2025, Ice officers carried out 12,791 illegal-working raids and made 8,971 arrests. However, the Home Office’s figures show that
only a quarter of those arrested (2,251) were detained and 12% (1,087) left the UK, either by force or voluntarily. 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”.
the Guardian
*The officers demanded to see their passports.
“They didn’t explain. They didn’t ask for permission,” says the restaurant’s owner, Mandira Moitra Sarkar. That 11 officers could burst into her business with no warrant and question staff is “astounding”, she says.
