Raids to Target Car Washes, Nail Bars as Home Office Diverts Manpower From Rwanda Scheme

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper arrives in Downing Street, London, on July 16, 2024. Jeff Moore/PA Wire

Car washes and beauty salons will be targeted in immigration raids while 1,000 civil servants working on the Rwanda deportation scheme have been redeployed, the home secretary has said.

Yvette Cooper said staff have been moved into a new Returns and Enforcement programme, which is designed to “increase returns of those with no right to be here and to make sure rules are respected and enforced, starting with an increase in illegal working raids.”

In an article published in The Sun on Sunday, the home secretary said immigration enforcement has been directed to ramp up raids over the summer to focus on “employers who are fuelling the trade of criminal gangs by exploiting and facilitating illegal working here in the UK—including in car washes and in the beauty sector.”

Ms. Cooper also said the government is working on plans to fast track asylum decisions and deportations to safe countries.

Labour has made border security one of its top priorities in government and has already taken steps to establish the Border Security Command promised in its manifesto.

In her article, Ms. Cooper said the command has recruited hundreds of new cross-border police, investigators, and prosecutors, to go after smuggling gangs in the UK and across Europe.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer also used this week’s European Political Community summit to discuss illegal migration with fellow European leaders, and signalled he would be open to considering offshore processing arrangements similar to that between Italy and Albania.

But he has been criticised by Conservatives for scrapping the Rwanda scheme on his first day in office, with opponents arguing it provided a necessary deterrent to those seeking to make the crossing.

In her article, Ms. Cooper acknowledged that tackling small boats would take time.

“We’ve inherited a difficult summer with record numbers of crossings already this year, and we know tackling the problem will take steady hard graft not gimmicks,” she wrote.

Since Labour took office, 2,143 illegal immigrants have been detected crossing the English Channel, according to provisional figures published by the Home Office.

By Saturday, the number of small boat arrives this year have reached 15,717. It’s 9 percent up from the number during the same period last year, and nearly 3 percent up from the previous record set in 2022.

The crossing has also continued to prove fatal, with two deaths recorded last week and four deaths in the week before that.

PA Media contributed to this report.