UK immigration enforcement

The concept of illegal entry as laid out in the 1971 Act did not extend to those who simply presented false documents or deceived the immigration officer on arrival about what they were going to do.

The police who dealt with foreign nationals acted according to whether the person had been posted "wanted" or not and were reliant on Home Office records of who had overstayed.

The London offices developed specialist teams targeting foreign vice trade workers, marriage fraud and West Indian gang crime.

The central London office worked closely with police to play a key role in the detention and removal of a number of high-profile "Yardies" and other criminals associated with Jamaican drug crime.

[13] In 1993 when a Jamaican woman Joy Gardner resisted having a deportation order enforced by an immigration officer and police in London, she died of suffocation after being gagged and having her head wrapped with tape.

[14] It was recognised that to create an effective in-country control would require a raft of new legislation and a vast expansion of detention facilities and enforcement immigration officers.

[22] The collapse of a Home Office IT project in 1999 had the effect of stopping the essential casework machinery that supported enforced removals.

The disruption of West Indian organised or semi-organised crime continued to be a theme of immigration enforcement work with particular success in the early 2000s in dealing with Yardies.

In 2000 a pilot in London established the Immigration Service's first arrest team which was set up trained and equipped to operate independently of the police.

The ICT operated as part of Reflex, the Government's inter-agency task force created to combat organised immigration crime.

[30] The ICT also contributed to Operation Wisdom, targeting individuals who obtained passports using the identities of dead children which was co-ordinated by the National Crime Squad and involved 18 UK police forces and the Immigration Service.

This tragedy, and crime, was the result of a number of factors; the fact that the people had been trafficked by "Snakeheads" and then used for illegal labour by a Gangmaster who had no regard for their safety, (and who was subsequently jailed).

In the subsequent investigation and enquiry there was much confusion as to whether the Immigration Service had been aware of the illegal workers at Morecambe bay and might have prevented their exploitation and deaths.

[44] An additional factor, which proved fatal, was the lack of centrally available data on either the numbers of prisoners or the stage their case had reached.

IND had difficulty answering the questions relating to the numbers involved and had to revise the figure upwards on more than one occasion, which undermined its credibility.

Following an investigation into the background to the problem the Enforcement & Removals Directorate was broken up for the second time in seven years and its resources distributed among a network of new regional Local Immigration Teams.

Most people removed or deported from within the UK are not convicted criminals but immigration offenders; those who have for instance overstayed their visa or have been found to have entered the country illegally.

Deportation is the lawful expulsion of an undesirable alien, usually following a criminal conviction but also in cases where there are grounds "conducive to the public good".

These included the Zamir judgement, which concerned a person who obtained a visa to join his father as his dependant while omitting to mention that he was married.

The case of Norman (Court of Appeal 1985) established that a person who sought entry as a visitor when his true intention was to claim asylum was an illegal entrant.

Overstayers were, until the end of the 1990s, treated as potential deportees – a cumbersome administrative process which involved a written submission to the Home Secretary in each case.

These were placed on conditional "coded" landing by the immigration officer on arrival and would be required to fill out an embarkation card on departure.

[51] The landing card did though often contain a useful written record of the person intentions on arrival and evidence of their inbound carrier who would be liable to pay for their return trip.

There were occasional operations to stop marriages at Registry Offices where firm intelligence suggested a fraud but the majority of this work was conducted at residential addresses at the behest of IND caseworkers who referred applications for further checks.

That might conclude matters but, in cases of doubt, the couple would be interviewed in detail and asked questions regarding their domestic life together and the history of their relationship.

The information available to the Immigration Service regarding bogus marriages was hindered by the proper concerns that registrars had of breaching confidentiality.

The 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act introduced new powers for registrars’ to demand that both partners attend in person to give notice, provide proof of identity and a declaration of nationality.

Although immigration offenders may, in theory, be prosecuted for illegal entry or overstaying it is usual practice to seek to remove the person from the UK as quickly as possible.

Where private addresses are visited in an effort to trace offenders officers generally seek to gain the cooperation of those present but do have certain powers of entry and may obtain warrants to search premises.

In practice there are a multitude of potential obstacles to removing a person from the UK which may include outstanding applications or appeals, legal representations and lack of essential documentation.