Nicola Sturgeon slams ‘dangerous’ Home Office after deportation stand-off

Nicola Sturgeon has blamed the UK government’s Home Office for creating a “dangerous” situation in Glasgow yesterday after activists became involved in an eight-hour stand-off with immigration officials.

After two men were seized in a dawn raid, “growing numbers of peaceful protesters surrounded a Home Office van”. One demonstrator “crawled underneath and prevented it from transporting the detainees”, Politico reports.

Following an all-day stand-off, during which a number of scuffles broke out between protesters and police officers, the two men, both Indian nationals who have lived in Scotland for 10 years, were released. The front page of The National this morning read: “Glasgow 1, ‘Team UK’ 0”

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‘No one is illegal’

The demonstration began when “hundreds of demonstrators descended on Kenmure Street” in Glasgow as “UK Border Force officials apparently attempted to deport a pair of men from a property there on Thursday morning”, The Scotsman reports.

Footage from the confrontation shows “a small number of local residents rushing to block a Home Office van from leaving”, before one activist managed to “position themselves under the van” where he would stay for the ensuing eight hours, the paper adds.

After the initial group of neighbours rushed to block the van, the crowd quickly grew to around 200. Some held banners that read “no one is illegal” and chanting “leave our neighbours, let them go” and “cops go home”, The Herald says.

And as the crowd swelled, the Home Office van was “surrounded by protesters, with some sitting on the road in front of it and a crowd gathering down the street”, the paper adds.

After being released from the van, one of the two men, Lakhvir Singh, told ITV: “I’m so happy that my fate brought me to live here in Glasgow, where the people are so connected that they’ll come out onto the streets to help one of their own.”

Scottish First Minister Sturgeon, who was yesterday being sworn in as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) following last week’s elections, tweeted that she was “deeply concerned” by the Home Office’s actions, adding that the raid was especially harmful “in the heart of a community celebrating Eid”.

Sturgeon continued that she “will be demanding assurances from the UK government that they will never again create, through their actions, such a dangerous situation. No assurances were given - and frankly no empathy shown - when I managed to speak to a junior minister earlier.

“I disagree fundamentally with [the Home Office’s] immigration policy but even putting that aside, this action was unacceptable. To act in this way, in the heart of a Muslim community as they celebrated Eid, and in an area experiencing a Covid outbreak was a health and safety risk.”

‘Lawful removal’

The Home Office has gone on the defensive following Sturgeon’s criticism, with an unnamed source telling BBC Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall that “it is completely unacceptable for a mob to stop the lawful removal of people living in our country illegally. We 100% back the frontline in removing those with no right to be here.”

Scottish politicians from across the spectrum leapt on the quote, with the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) Michael Russell, Scotland’s constitution secretary, tweeting that the comment was “utterly tone deaf”.

The Home Office source’s stance was proof, “if further proof was needed, that the gulf between Scottish consented governance and UK Tory imposition is now so great as to be completely unbridgeable”, Russell added.

This was echoed by Patrick Harvie, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, who tweeted: “The people who put themselves at risk to defend their neighbours from state violence today are not a ‘mob’. Today we saw the best of Glasgow, and the worst of the racist Home Office.”

Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf shared a video in which he said that after “hours trying to get the Home Office to abandon their operation, without success” he was “pleased” to see the release of the two men.

In a second tweet, Yousaf continued that he “abhors Home Office immigration policy at the best of times”, adding that “to have taken the action they have today is at best completely reckless, and at worst intended to provoke”.