Yvette Cooper’s new anti-migrant plan will boost the far right

Anti-racism

Labour’s Home Secretary has promised an ‘increase’ in the detention and deportation of migrants

Yvette Cooper wants to deport more refugees to appear ‘tough’ on immigration (Photo: UK Home Office/Flickr)

Labour Home Secretary Yvette Cooper wants to deport 14,000 people by the end of the year, ordering the Home Office on Wednesday to carry out a “surge” in deportations and the “highest rate of deportations” since 2018.

Her announcement will sow fear among refugees and provide a boost to the far right, which is licking its wounds after being pushed back onto the streets.

Over the next six months, Cooper wants to “achieve” the highest rate of deportations since Theresa May took charge of the Home Office. To reach the 2018 level of 9,000 deportations a year, Labour will need to forcibly remove 3,000 more people this year than last year.

Weyman Bennett, co-convener of Stand Up To Racism (SUTR), told Socialist Worker: “We need real answers and solutions, not pandering to the right-wing media.

“Instead of opening safe passages for refugees in need of safety, we are opening passages for the far right to grow.

“It will feed the madness of people who feel there is a link between poverty and immigration. The cause lies with policies such as the two-child benefit cap, not with migrants.”

The Labour Party boasted that nine return flights had departed in the six weeks since the election, one of which had more than 20 people on board.

Cooper has already announced a “summer blitz” of raids on refugees whose asylum claims have been denied. The plan will redeploy staff from Rwanda’s deportation plan to work on returning refugees and increase sanctions on bosses who hire undocumented workers.

Labour said it will reopen immigration detention centres in Hampshire and Oxfordshire, adding 290 beds.

The Haslar site, near Portsmouth in Hampshire, was closed in 2015 after a report described the site as ‘costly and harmful to prisoners’.

Cooper said she wants to introduce a “better policed” system to replace “the chaos that has plagued the system for far too long.”

Labour threw out the Tories’ Rwanda plan, calling it a “gimmick” and ditching the Bibby Stockholm boat.

These welcome developments would not have happened without the anti-racist campaigns and, in the case of the boat, the action of the refugees themselves.

The claims of refugees who were destined for Rwanda are now being processed. The Tories told refugees who arrived after June 2021 that their claims would not be processed.

Cooper announced the plans as 206 people crossed the Channel to Britain on Monday. Labour is playing to the far-right and racists, such as Nigel Farage and the other four Reform UK MPs.

Cooper claims Labour wants to “destroy” the criminal gangs that smuggle people across the English Channel. She says 100 new “specialist intelligence officers” working for the National Crime Agency will target people traffickers.

A new UK Border Security Command has been appointed to stop boat crossings.

But the people smugglers only exist because of Britain and the European Union’s racist border rules. If there were safe and legal routes for refugees, they wouldn’t be forced to pay for people smugglers.

More than half of the people travelling in small boats come from war-torn and dangerous countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea, Syria, Iraq and Sudan.

A crackdown that makes it harder to cross the Channel will not “destroy” the gangs or stop desperate people trying to reach safety in Britain. It will only force them to take more dangerous routes, and make death inevitable.

Targeting “failed” asylum claims also reinforces a picture of “good” and “bad” migrants. Their asylum claims “fail” precisely because the Home Office makes it so difficult for people to settle in Britain.

Labour is desperate to prove it can deport and stop more refugees than the Tories. But in their desperation to push the narrative further to the right, the Tories have said the plans are “not ambitious enough”.

Labour pushing an anti-migrant narrative gives oxygen to the far right. And if the government fails to “stop the boats”, the far right can turn around and say: “We need to mobilise to stop them where the establishment fails.”

What could be next on Cooper’s agenda? Will Labour turn down more refugee cases? Will it become even harder for refugees to get asylum?

Anti-racists must challenge Labour’s plans, while building a counter-response to the far right and fascists on the streets.