Since the creation of modern immigration controls in 1905, foreign nationals evading immigration control or committing crimes were regarded as a police matter and those people arrested were put before the courts whereupon they would be prosecuted and go through the deportation process. The United Kingdom Immigration Service's enforcement arm evolved gradually from the early 1970s onwards to meet demand from police for assistance in dealing with foreign national offenders and suspected immigration offenders within the UK. The wider history of UK immigration control is dealt with under UK immigration control - history.
Immigration enforcement within the UK from 1962
1962–1973: Limitations of in-country enforcement The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 placed new restrictions on British Commonwealth citizens entering the UK and was seen as severe at the time. While it allowed conditions to be imposed on those previously allowed free entry it provided no powers concerning those who evaded the border controls altogether.
"A person shall not be required to submit to examination ... after the expiration of the period of twenty-four hours from the time when he lands in the United Kingdom. …" (Para 2 Sch1, Commonwealth Citizens Act 1962).
This was partially addressed by the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 after which Commonwealth citizens were required by law to submit to immigration control on arrival. However, for those that evaded the border controls, the law stipulated that there were only 28 days in which to apprehend them. In the event of their being captured the person was awarded an in-country right of appeal that would mean they could not immediately be removed.
The Immigration Act 1971 removed the 28-day limit and created a right of appeal that could only be exercised from abroad. It also attempted to define the concept of illegal entry but it was only by testing the law through various judgements and challenges that the principle was established that someone arriving illegally did not have to go through the judicial process and deportation consideration, they could be "administratively" removed on the direction of an immigration officer acting on the authority of the Secretary of State. The evidence of the need for new powers was provided in a parliamentary question from 1972 which gave the bald facts that 13 people had been successfully prosecuted in the previous 12 months for facilitating illegal entry and 10 people had been treated as illegal entrants. Following the passage of the Immigration Act 1971, action to detect immigration offenders in the community was still considered a police matter and largely limited to the detection of seamen deserters, absconders from ports or those who were the subject of deportation orders. The powers in the 1971 Act focussed on the offences of overstaying and assumed that those who did so would be prosecuted and deported. Although it defined what an illegal entrant was, it did not provide sufficient clarity as to how the law should be applied. The concept of illegal entry as laid out in the 1971 Act did not extend to those who simply presented false documents or deceived the immigration officer on arrival about what they were going to do. It was only by establishing legal precedent through judgments’ that a consistent set of powers emerged.
1973–1985: Formation of enforcement teams Control of immigration in the UK was, until the 1980s almost exclusively focussed on border control. The law regarding the treatment of immigration offenders within the UK was unclear and would not start being resolved until the mid-1970s. Efforts made to extend controls at the border contrasted sharply with the lack of powers to deal with those who evaded them. The Labour government of 1974-79 maintained a policy of opposing internal immigration controls in favour of putting more resource into the border control and visa offices abroad.
The police who dealt with foreign nationals acted according to whether the person had been posted "wanted" or not and were reliant on Home Office records of who had overstayed. The police set up their own Immigration Intelligence Unit in October 1972. The Immigration Act prosecutions recorded at the time are then police prosecutions rather than Immigration Service ones. The police enjoyed some success in this work but a clear need emerged for the Immigration Service and police to cooperate and immigration enforcement offices evolved in the early 1970s to meet this need.
After the new Act came into force in 1973 more effort was directed to the detection and removal of illegal entrants. The Act was based on a concept of illegal entry which assumed illegal entry via clandestine landings. This had some basis in fact given the incentive within the 1962 Act to enter this way but even with the new laws it was a slow start; the total number of illegal entrants, overstayers and seamen deserters detected and removed in 1973 was reported as 44 but, in 1977, when answering a question on the numbers of deportees in 1973 the minister stated that 147 had been removed. Early immigration enforcement statistics are difficult to interpret as the terms "illegal entrant" and "illegal migrant" seem to have been used interchangeably and, at various times, encompassed overstayers, deportees AND illegal entrants which are all different types of offender in later reports. The lack of a cohesive enforcement structure must have played a part in this confusion but, overall, the numbers of enforced removals were very small.
Enforcement work was carried out by Immigration Officers who were otherwise normally engaged on passport controls at ports. In London, the main enforcement offices were based at Harmondsworth near Heathrow Airport and at Adelaide House, London Bridge. Duties at the Port of London included dealing with passengers and crew, interviewing foreign criminals in London prisons, attending court and making visits to private addresses to talk to people about their status or circumstances. Later in the 1970s, Immigration Officers were diverted to interview people in relation to their applications made under the amnesties of the time.
The Immigration Service Intelligence Unit in Harmondsworth, which had 29 officers by 1976, was responsible for managing the Immigration Service Intelligence database and assisting the police. By 1980 major operations were possible and were being mounted with particular emphasis on the hotel and restaurant trade.
1985–1993: Growth, specialisation and PACE Enforcement work became increasingly diverse and relatively more sophisticated during the 1980s. The London offices developed specialist teams targeting foreign vice trade workers, marriage fraud and West Indian gang crime. The central London office worked closely with police to play a key role in the detention and removal of a number of high-profile "Yardies" and other criminals associated with Jamaican drug crime. Combatting bogus colleges, (already noted above), was also an ongoing theme in enforcement work with some particular successes, including the closure of the "Advanced College of Business and Cultural Studies" where 63 people were arrested. Another regular source of work was the "marriage visit" to a home address to test whether the relationship was a Sham marriage. Marriage abuse was, and is, an embedded feature of immigration enforcement work and the Enforcement Directorate sought to combat it directly by allowing specialist teams to develop. "Operation Goldring" was a long running exercise operated by a central London unit at Isis House in the late 1980s early 1990s.
In 1992, the Immigration Service was split to form separate Ports and Enforcement Directorates. The split did not immediately solve the issue of those "hybrid" ports which dealt with both areas of work. By later standards enforcement immigration officers were severely constrained. Lack of radio or telephone communications meant that they were heavily reliant on police support. Although immigration officers were conferred powers of arrest under the 1971 Act they did not use these as a matter of policy and they were reliant of police officers and police facilities to perform their duties. When conducting pro-active investigations to private addresses immigration officers would take the lead in identifying immigration offenders and ask police to execute the arrest on their behalf.
Those offenders thus detected would be interviewed at a police station under caution. A large proportion of available resource was dedicated to responding to police requests for assistance. By 1989 the two main London offices at Isis House and ISIU Harmondsworth were responding to thousands of calls per year. The central London identified 1,402 offenders as a result of police call-outs in 1989 and ISIU 1,230.
In 1993 when a Jamaican woman Joy Gardner resisted having a deportation order enforced by an immigration officer and police in London, she died of suffocation after being gagged and having her head wrapped with tape. The incident and its subsequent investigation halted most pro-active immigration enforcement for a substantial period and was the cause of a reappraisal by police of their role in immigration enforcement which had far-reaching implications. The Metropolitan Police, and other forces, were concerned at the potential damage done to community trust and confidence. The police insisted on new safeguards and processes to better communicate the nature of joint operations and assess risks. Although police assistance continued to be the norm it was the beginning of a shift towards greater self-reliance by immigration enforcement.
In the 1990s there was a rapid increase in the numbers of immigration offenders claiming asylum shortly after arrest. Senior police officers expressed concern at the escalating use of police stations as places where immigration offenders were required to report having been released.
In 1993 asylum seekers were given the right of appeal before removal as part of the Immigration and Asylum Appeals Act 1993. The numbers of asylum applications began to rise. In 1993, 120 immigration officers undertook the enforcement work for the whole of the UK. It was recognised that to create an effective in-country control would require a raft of new legislation and a vast expansion of detention facilities and enforcement immigration officers. In 1992 Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker ruled out wider internal immigration controls.
1994–1997: In-country asylum claims and focus on illegal working The exact numbers claiming asylum when detected were not recorded, but the numbers who had to be released after detection rather than removed from the UK are available. Between 1994 and 1996 there is shown a rising trend in detection of illegal entrants but the numbers released on Temporary Admission increased steadily. People without legal qualification could function as immigration legal advisors; legal aid was available for immigration cases. Legal aid costs rose dramatically between 1988 and 1992 as did the numbers of applications for judicial review. By 1997 25% of all judicial reviews lodged were related to immigration cases.
Growing numbers of those detected were found working illegally, 10,000 in 1994 as opposed to fewer than 4,000 in 1988. Until 1997 it was illegal to undertake paid work only if employment was prohibited as a condition of entry; people who had entered illegally were not subject to this restriction, although they would if detected be arrested as illegal entrants. There was no sanction on employers employing an illegal entrant.
1997–2001: Employer sanctions - impact of reorganisation Section 8 of the Asylum Act of 1996 made it an offence to employ an illegal worker, with a potential fine of £5,000. Very few employers prosecuted were prosecuted.