Home Office ‘Infiltrating’ Safe Havens To Deport Rough Sleepers

The Home Office is using information gathered in “immigration surgeries” at charities and places of worship to deport vulnerable homeless people who are told that attending will help them get financial support, the Guardian has learned. Interviews and internal emails revealed the Salvation Army, Sikh gurdwaras and a Chinese community support centre are among the bodies allowing Home Office teams in London to run sessions in spaces that are intended to be safe havens for homeless people. Attendees are assured the sessions are not offered as part of “an enforcement approach” to immigration cases and told that taking part may help them regularise their status.

However, the initiative is run by the Home Office’s immigration enforcement unit and if officials conclude that attendees have no right to be in the country, they may be asked to agree to their voluntary removal. If they refuse they risk being subjected to the Home Office’s “case-by-case” discretion and deported. Experts said the practice allows Home Office officials to gain access to vulnerable homeless people they might otherwise not be able to locate and warned the approach was part of a broader strategy. Last year the Guardian reported that the homelessness outreach charity St Mungo’s was working with Home Office teams searching for rough sleepers to arrest and deport. The latest disclosures are supported by 46 pages of email exchanges between the Home Office and local council officials in Redbridge, east London, initially obtained by the Public Interest Law Centre, that shed light on the Home Office’s contribution to the government’s rough sleeping strategy.

Read more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://is.gd/PFvZLk