We have made some major changes to the Immigration Enforcement sections of our Key Guide on Immigration Enforcement: Reporting and Raids.

The updated guide includes clearer information about voluntary questioning and formal immigration powers, police and Immigration Enforcement working together, warrants and searches, phones and electronic devices, and what people can do during and after an enforcement operation. We have also rewritten the Action Sections to make them easier to use during an enforcement situation based on what we are learning from anti-raids organising and what communities are experiencing on the ground.

Why have we rewritten the immigration raids section of the Key Guide? 

Our Public Legal Education team is perhaps a grand name for two people: me, working full-time from Leeds, and Louise, working four days a week in Birmingham, who joined us in May this year. Right to Remain is a tiny organisation, but the work we do, and our mission for migrant justice, are by no means small.

Over the summer, we have been undertaking a huge rewrite of the Toolkit while preparing for yet more changes expected this autumn. A lot of our work is trying to make sense of an immigration and asylum system that changes constantly, work out what those changes mean in practice, and turn that into information people can actually use. It has, quite honestly, felt relentless and infuriating. We are living through the consequences of a Government response to migration that is built on racism and punishment, while the reasons people move, and the harm created by the immigration system itself, are ignored. And the answer, again and again, is more enforcement, more detention and more money lining the pockets of the private companies who deliver it and continue to profit from human suffering. 

Having only published our Key Guide on Immigration Enforcement in December 2025, of all the pages that needed updating I had not expected this to suddenly be on the top of my to-do list. But a lot has changed in this short space of time. Immigration enforcement continues to increase (Between January and June 2026, the Home Office carried out 7,270 illegal working visits and made 4,756 arrests – that’s an increase of 31% and 20% compared with the same period in 2025.) There has also been a new policy on illegal working for people living in asylum support, while the government is pushing ahead with plans to significantly expand the immigration detention estate. At the same time, access to legal advice in immigration detention has been recorded at an all-time low. 

Learning from a recent immigration raid

Some of these questions came into sharp focus during a recent Immigration Enforcement visit to a late-night hot food takeaway in Leeds.

Eight officers arrived in two unmarked vehicles with a warrant for one named person, who was not there. Officers said they were relying on the warrant, but then questioned other workers about their work and immigration situation, repeatedly demanding information, and questioning why workers were acting nervous, suggesting this was suspicious behaviour. Officers looked through information on workers phones questioning why they had made phone calls and what WhatsApp groups they were in. 

Follow-up from Leeds Anti-Raids with the workers also established that the person named on the warrant had valid immigration permission and was complying with their conditions. Eight officers, two vehicles, more than an hour of disruption, frightened workers and invasive questioning, for an operation that ended with nobody being taken. You might be asking the same basic question we were left with: what was all of that for?

For us, this also exposed where ‘know your rights’ messages can become difficult in practice. In a tense and intimidating situation, with officers speaking and acting with seemingly unquestionable authority, it can be hard to work out what is actually happening. You can quickly start to doubt yourself and feel that you have no choice but to comply. If officers have a warrant for one person, what allows them to start questioning somebody else? What changes if the workplace is licensed to serve late-night hot food, where officers may have a separate power to enter without permission? When does a voluntary conversation become a formal immigration examination? Can someone’s understandable fear during a raid be treated as “suspicious” and used to justify further questioning? And what allows officers to take or look through someone’s phone?

This experience reminded us that having legal information is one thing, but being able to use it in a high stakes situation is another. Enforcement situations are frightening, can shift quickly, and officers do not always behave in-line with written policy. Knowledge on its own is only a grain of sand in machinery that runs through everyday life often in ways that are hard to see but reaching into peoples lives in ways that are difficult, and often impossible, to escape. The Toolkit is an important resource, but it is most powerful when it is used through relationships and trust, alongside people rather than simply handed to them.

In Leeds, it was a customer who first raised the alarm in a local alerts group. They knew how to do this because Leeds Anti-Raids had already spent time building relationships and sharing information in the area. The staff also knew who Leeds Anti-Raids were and trusted to take support from them. That trust did not appear in the moment of crisis, it had been built beforehand, and it also made meaningful follow-up possible afterwards.

What has changed in the Key Guide on Immigration Enforcement?

Some of these areas were already covered in the original guide, but we have substantially rewritten and expanded the enforcement sections. You can read the full Key Guide on Immigration Enforcement: Reporting and Raids here. 

The main changes include:

• Clearer information on voluntary questions, formal examinations and public-space stops
• A new section on police and Immigration Enforcement working together
• Clearer explanations of warrants, consent, licensed premises and the limits of different powers including examples of a court-issued warrant and AD letter
• New section with information on Immigration Officers ability to search phones, electronic devices, PINs and passwords
• simpler Action Sections with practical questions people can use in the moment
• more on supporting someone during a raid and what to do afterwards, including detention planning and recording what happened
• updated community safety guidance, reflecting lessons from anti-raids organising, privacy risks, unmarked vehicles and why more people arriving does not always mean more protection

How raids connect to detention and the wider enforcement system that harms us all

What we are still not seeing in the migration justice sector is a strong, shared narrative that connects raids, enforcement and detention. These systems potentially affect millions of people whose right to live in the UK remains conditional, temporary or unresolved, as well as their families and communities. Our Knowledge is Power session on Detention and Enforcement has noticeably less interest than the other sessions we run on other parts of the asylum system, even as enforcement expands. We have even renamed the session to emphasize that resistance is built in communities, and needs to start before raids and before detention happens.

Raids and detention are not separate systems. Enforcement is often the point where someone is questioned, arrested and taken into detention. We’ll keep saying it, and louder for the people at the back: detention affects all of us. When someone is detained, the impact spreads far beyond them. Families, communities, schools, healthcare services, workplaces and others are left picking up the pieces.

For us, this means resistance to enforcement, from raids and reporting through to detention, removal and deportation, cannot be carried only by the people directly affected, grassroots groups or by organisations already working on detention. We need more people, communities, workers and movements to understand how detention connects to what happens in our streets, homes and workplaces, and to see themselves as part of resisting it.

As Louise and I have picked through line after line of immigration law, despairing at the gaps between what policy says and what we know happens in practice, (interspersed with conversations about our respective sweat rates) this summer’s heat has been its own reminder: climate change will increasingly shape migration and displacement, deepening inequalities already built into these systems. The state’s refusal to care runs through all of it: for why people move, for the conditions people are forced to live through, and for the communities left carrying the consequences. 

But look at what happened in Leeds – this shows us how communities hold power. Please don’t underestimate those conversations or small acts of connection. When the scale of what we are facing feels overwhelming and exhausting, and so much around us tells us not to trust each other, these relationships matter. The state does not get to decide how we relate to and show up for one another. This is how we build radical solidarity, practice hope and protect one another.

– Ally Swadling, Lead Legal Education Officer