UK Labour Government Boasts of Illegal Immigration Crackdown

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer departs from Downing Street in London on Jan. 29, 2025. Leon Neal/Getty Images

The UK’s Labour government on Monday boasted of its success in raiding businesses that employ illegal immigrant workers and deporting thousands with no right to stay in the UK.

The administration, headed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has named the move a “blitz on illegal working” as part of the party’s shifting stance in rhetoric around immigration.

The topic has long been an important issue for voters and has led to the still-rising popularity of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party, which gained five seats in the Westminster Parliament in the election in July 2024.

Rise of Reform UK

Since then, Reform UK has continued to see improvements in its poll numbers, first by surpassing the Conservatives, who were vociferously rejected by the electorate after 14 years in charge seven months ago but remain the UK’s second-largest party in terms of MPs.

A number of more recent polls, however, have seen Reform poll higher than Starmer’s party, with a YouGov poll taken between Feb. 9 and Feb. 10 showing the party on 26 percent of the vote to Labour’s 25 percent.

This is despite Labour winning a landslide victory, taking 404 out of 650 seats in July 2024.

This has led Labour to pledge to reduce immigration, which has hit record levels in recent years, with the latest available figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), showing that some 1.2 million people came to live in the UK in the year ending June 2024.

‘Experiment in Open Borders’

In November 2024, Starmer made a speech from Downing Street in which he blamed those numbers on the last Conservative government.

“This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed. Deliberately to liberalize immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose. To turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders,” he said.

To address this, the government said on Monday that immigration enforcement teams had carried out more than 5,000 raids since the July 2024 election on businesses including nail bars, vape shops, restaurants, and car washes, and made almost 4,000 arrests as well as releasing video footage of illegal immigrants being deported.

Those figures are significantly higher than the previous year, when the Conservatives, then led by Rishi Sunak, were in power.

The UK has also deported almost 19,000 people in the same period, the government said.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage speaks at the party's annual conference at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England, on Sept. 20, 2024. Joe Giddens/PA Wire

Home Office Minister Angela Eagle defended the approach on the BBC, saying: “We have to have a system where the rules are respected and enforced.

“It’s important that we show what we are doing and it’s important that we send messages to people who may have been sold lies about what will await them in the UK if they get themselves smuggled in.”

Labour says the perception from abroad that it is easy to find work in the UK is a “dangerous draw” for migrants attempting to cross from France on small boats.

Authorities on both sides of the English Channel have struggled for years to stop the crossings, which accounted for more than 38,000 arrivals to the UK in 2024.

More than 70 lost their lives attempting the dangerous crossing.

Migrants picked up at sea attempting to cross the English Channel from France disembark from Border Force vessel Typhoon after it arrived at the Marina in Dover, southeast England on Feb. 9, 2025. Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images

Starmer has said the crime gangs orchestrating these crossings are a threat to global security and should be treated like terrorists.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which passed a key vote in the UK Parliament on Monday, contains “counterterror-style powers” including the ability to seize suspected traffickers’ phones before they are arrested.

“We cannot allow the criminal gangs to end up putting life at risk in this way or to undermine our border security,” Cooper told the House of Commons.

She added that it’s vital that “governments, not gangs, choose who enters our country.”

MPs voted 333 to 109 to approve the bill at second reading, after earlier rejecting a Conservative amendment designed to block the legislation.

The Conservatives called it “a weak bill that won’t stop the boats,” but dissent was not limited to opposition benches, with some Labour MPs expressing concerns.

One of the party’s longest-serving MPs, Diane Abbott, told the House, “If you don’t want people drowning in the Channel, the answer is to enable the processing of these asylum claims to be done in northern France, which is something the French had offered to us.”

Labour MP Nadia Whittome, meanwhile, raised concerns the bill would lead to the “unintended consequence” of criminalizing those seeking asylum.

The new immigration bill is almost certain to become law because of Labour’s large majority and reflects a growing trend of anti-immigration sentiment across Western Europe.

Many political parties that have a more skeptical view of immigration have been gaining ground across the continent, notably in Austria and Germany, and Denmark and Sweden have both seen their incumbent parties toughen up on the issue as well.

The Associated Press and PA Media contributed to this report.