[citation needed] Between 1998 and 2000, Qureshi, together with the human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, campaigned on behalf of the family of murdered Indian waiter Surjit Singh Chhokhar.
The network went on to house hundreds of refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan, providing a safety net for unaccompanied asylum seekers, women with children, and potential victims of trafficking.
[citation needed] In September 2005, Qureshi travelled to Albania on a fact-finding mission after taking up the case of a family who were expelled to Kosovo in two separate dawn raids after living in Glasgow for five years as asylum seekers.
She called on Scotland's First Minister Jack McConnell to instruct Strathclyde Police not to cooperate with immigration officials who carry out dawn raids.
[3][4] Malcolm Chisholm MSP, Minister for Communities in the Scottish Executive, joined Qureshi in criticising the "heavy-handed" immigration policies,.
In November 2007, Qureshi took up the case of 13-year-old Meltem Avcil, a 13-year-old Kurdish girl from Doncaster, who began self-harming after being detained with her mother at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre and about to be deported.
Enlisting the support of the actress Juliet Stevenson, Sir Al Aynsley, Children's Commissioner, and journalists at The Independent newspaper, including Natasha Walter, Qureshi ran a campaign across the UK and Europe to secure Meltem and her mother's release.
[5] In 2014, Qureshi raised funds and successfully gathered public support to bring an Afghan baby Sudais Asif to Glasgow for medical treatment.
The little boy suffered severe burns and lost his entire family in a gas explosion in Peshawar, Pakistan.1 In 2015, at the height of media interest in the Syrian refugee crisis, Qureshi spoke out in a heated debate with Sarah Smith against what she described as the BBC's "doublespeak", criticising the BBC’s constant references to refugees fleeing war and persecution as migrants.
[citation needed] Qureshi has been a critic of UK policies on civil liberties, comparing the British Government's attitude towards the threat of homegrown terrorism and the subsequent impact on the Muslim community to the experience of the Irish in 1970s and 1980s Britain.