Professor Julian Go has warned the police both in the UK and US are becoming increasingly militarised, and highlighted his fears of a potential British ICE-type organisation
A policing expert has given a bleak six-word verdict on whether the the UK could be gripped in an ICE-like crackdown as fears mount about the country’s response to immigration.
New efforts to clamp down on both legal and illegal immigration have seen a net fall, according to recent figures released last week. Data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found that immigration dropped to its lowest levels since 2012, not counting the pandemic, but political parties are calling for an even more intense and potentially police-backed crackdown.
Some have turned to the example Donald Trump has set in the US, where his officials have deployed agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country to identify and remove people they say are staying in the country illegally. The organisation, overseen by the US Department for Homeland Security (DHS) has caused mass outrage across the Atlantic for its heavy handed and brutal treatment of migrants, and the violence inflicted on citizens, some of whom have been killed during protests.
But the prospect of such chaos coming to the UK has left one policing expert admitting his fears keep him “up at night”. He said: “I lose sleep at night worrying”.
Delivering a lecture on the militarisation of police in the UK and US on Wednesday, Julian Go, a professor of sociology at the University of Chicago, argued that British police are “heavily militarised” like their counterparts across the Atlantic. He told attendees at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) that cops appearing more like armed forces units in the 21st century.
He said: “We’ve seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement units called ICE dressed and armed like deadly marines and even deploying their weapons against innocent civilians.
“To be clear, none of this is restricted to the US, British police, too, are heavily militarised. British police are not as armed as the American police, but this doesn’t mean British police aren’t armed.” He noted that UK cops have armed units and “share the mindsets and mentality of military units”.
The professor went on to highlight that the trend has been deemed “deeply trouble”, and later opened up on where he thought it might be developing on the UK side of the Atlantic.
When asked what he thought the future may bring as militarisation continues, the academic said: “Let’s say I lose sleep at night worrying about that.” Fears that officials could embrace the example set by Donald Trump in the US were compounded this year after Reform outlined plans to put together a UK Deportation Command based on ICE.
The plan was introduced by the Reform-styled “shadow home secretary” Zia Yusuf, who described the arrival of migrants in the UK as an “invasion”.
He tried to pass off concerns that such an organisation could result in deadly confrontations that saw Renee Goode and Alex Pretti die in ICE shootings and 32 people die in custody as being unlikely due to the UK’s lack of guns. He said: “I’ve spent a lot of time in America, and there are more firearms in America than humans.
“There are many problems in this country, but thankfully we don’t have that problem.” The plans were condemned as “sadistic” by Dora-Olivia Vicol, the chief executive of the Work Rights Centre.
She said: “We have watched in horror as ICE attacked migrant communities and citizens in the US – yet this is what Reform wants to base their immigration policies on? This is a sadistic vision of UK families and communities being ripped apart, money being wasted, and the government turning against its own people.”
