Immigration enforcement officials are targeting places of worship to advise people with insecure statuses to go back to their countries of origin, The Independent has learned.
Specialist teams from the Home Office have carried out more than 400 “community engagement surgeries” at temples, mosques, gurdwaras and churches over the past three years – a fourfold rise since 2019.
In at least three instances last year, officials carried out immigration enforcement visits at places of worship that resulted in taking people directly to an airport, according to figures obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request.
Migrant groups and charities criticised the practice, calling for the “hostile environment” policy to be scrapped and claiming people were being “duped”.
Mary Atkinson, policy adviser for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), told The Independent: “Immigration enforcement has no place in faith spaces – the government must immediately stop running these workshops and scrap the hostile environment so that everybody can access essential public services.”
The “hostile environment” was a set of policies introduced in 2012 by the home secretary at the time, Theresa May, intended to make staying in the UK as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain in the hope that they would leave voluntarily.
The surgeries in religious premises are being carried out by officials from the Home Office’s National Community Engagement Team (NCET), a branch of the department’s Immigration Enforcement function.
They are aimed at undocumented migrants, failed asylum seekers and other migrant groups to advise on how to access the government’s voluntary returns scheme, reintegration, and question-and-answer sessions on overstays, student visas, EU settlement and delays in applications.
Their existence was uncovered as controversy raged over the government’s handling of migrants arriving by dinghy across the English Channel.
The revelation comes as home secretary Suella Braverman is facing possible legal action over conditions at the migrant processing centre at Manston Airfield, where 4,000 people were crammed into facilities intended for 1,600.
One nine-year-old girl described conditions as “like a prison” in a letter she threw over the perimeter fence. Despite the centre being designed to deal with cases within 24 hours, there were reports of asylum seekers remaining for up to a month, with some sleeping in tents.
A hurried operation to get numbers down saw 1,200 people ferried out of the camp by bus over four days, but the Home Office was forced to apologise because some were left to sleep rough on the streets of London.
Home Office minister Chris Philp was branded “callous” after saying it was “a bit of a cheek” for them to complain about conditions when they had chosen to travel to the UK from countries where they could safely have remained.
In other developments, riot police were called to Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow Airport on Friday night after a group of detainees armed with weaponry caused a “disturbance” during a power outage.
And on Saturday, Counter Terrorism Policing South East declared that the firebombing of an immigration processing centre in Dover last weekend was a terrorist incident, “motivated by an extreme right-wing ideology”.
Figures released under the FOI Act showed that, in 2019, 46 surgeries were held at places of worship, compared with 167 in 2021.
The Home Office says 137 surgeries were held on religious premises from January to the end of July this year, indicating that the figure for 2022 could be a record high.
Ms Atkinson of the JCWI said religious spaces were vital for those who already felt excluded in the UK.
“Faith spaces of all kinds are essential places for reflection, community and spirituality.
Policing minister Chris Philp was branded ‘callous’ for his comments on the crisis this week
