Deportation

A commentator here drew my attention last night to a new policy paper from the Restore Britain group that has been launched by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who now sits as an independent MP for Great Yarmouth in the House of Commons, and who, this weekend, launched his own political party.

That party is called Restore Britain, and sits further to the right than any other likely to attract media attention in the UK at present.

Entitled Mass Deportations: Legitimacy, Legality, and Logistics, this paper claims that the UK could remove every undocumented migrant now living in the country within a few years through sweeping legal change, administrative expansion, and a deliberately hostile environment designed to force voluntary departures. 

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In short, it would be one of the largest state economic programmes in modern British history, put together with the deliberate intention of pursuing hate whilst imposing threats, fear, intimidation, incarceration and violent relocation on many hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions of people.

The supposed numbers involved are staggering. The suggestion is that up to 2 million people might be forced from the UK within three years. About 75% half of those would supposedly leave voluntarily due to the hostile environment the policy would create. That environment would undoubtedly target all migrants, regardless of their legal status. It would be totally foolish to think otherwise. The remainder, the report suggests, would be forcibly removed. Official estimates do not suggest that anything like that number of people are illegally resident in the UK.

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We are often told that the state is powerless. That includes the claim that it is powerless to house people, powerless to fund social security, and powerless to invest in care.

This paper implies something quite differently. The implication is that the state is immensely powerful. The suggestion is that it is capable of tracking, detaining, transporting, and expelling millions. The contradiction is obvious, but it exposes something deeper.

The choice revealed is whether the state wants to do things that are good, to which the answer from the current political establishment is that, apparently, and for reasons that are not clear, it does not, or something straightforwardly evil, which is what this paper proposes, of which it is apparently thought to be capable.

The question is not, then, about whether the state has power. The question is about how that power is used, and to what ends.

Most people detained by ICE are being housed in sprawling complexes in rural areas, where the land is cheap and the protests are few. Akiv Dawson, a criminologist at Georgia Southern University, has been conducting research at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, which can hold up to 2,000 people at a time. She said that since Trump took office, courtrooms have been packed with immigrants whose experiences would, according to polling, trouble the average American—people who have lived in the U.S. for decades, have American-born children, and have never been convicted of a serious crime. She told me about a lawful permanent resident of 50 years whose child is a U.S. citizen and whose deceased wife was as well. The man explained in court that ICE agents had mistaken him for someone else when they arrested him. But he admitted in court to having a single criminal conviction—simple marijuana possession from 30 years ago—so the judge decided to let the deportation case against him proceed. The man told the judge that his belongings would soon be thrown into the street if he wasn’t released; he needed to go back to work and pay rent. “He began to panic,” Dawson told me. “He said, ‘My people don’t even know that I’m here. They came and took me from my bed.’” Dawson said the man asked the judge why this was happening after he had spent so many decades in the United States. She replied, “Sir, this is happening across the country.”

Dawson also told me about a young mother from Ecuador who had followed the legal process for requesting asylum and pleaded to be released on bail so that she could be reunited with her 2-year-old son, whom she had left with a neighbor. “She begged,” Dawson said, and recalled the woman saying, “Please, give me an opportunity so that I can do the process the right way.” The woman said she wouldn’t be able to continue with her asylum case if she was going to have to do it from inside a detention center. “I have a child. I can’t be here too long without him,” she said. With that, the judge said the woman had waived her right to relief, and continued processing her for removal from the country.

“Are you going to deport me with my son?” the woman asked. “I don’t have anyone to keep him here.”

“You would need to talk to your deportation officer,” the judge replied, according to Dawson. “I’m only handling your case.”