Immigration lawyers are carrying personal safety alarms in fear they will be physically attacked amid a “growing climate of hostility” they say is partly fuelled by “dangerous” Home Office rhetoric.
With a general election looming, the Government’s “anti migrant attacks” will only ramp up, Legal Director at Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), Pierre Makhlouf, has warned.
“We will need to be really careful, the closer we get to the elections, that we don’t get attacked as a consequence of that rhetoric,” he told the Standard.
Mr Makhlouf added that violence against asylum seekers and refugees in the UK this year “has made it evident to immigration lawyers that the Government rhetoric is leading to violence”.
He said that BID, which represents clients in their deportation appeal, has received threatening phone calls, letters which had to be referred to police, and has been accused of “helping rapists and murderers”.
Another immigration lawyer and Partner at the firm Leigh Day, Jacqueline McKenzie, sat in her car “petrified” that it would “blow up” after an email containing a “misrepresentative” dossier about her from the Conservative Campaign Headquarters was shared to newspapers in August.
The asylum seeker was about to be deported from the UK to Rwanda under the Government’s controversial scheme.
Mrs McKenzie said she has reported the dossier as a hate crime to police and said she still watches her back when she leaves the office.
“The sort of vitriol that I’ve received is mainly on social media but also stuff has come into my inbox at work. One person said: ‘You deserve what’s coming to you’,” she told the Standard.
“I had the cutthroat emoji [sent to me] on Twitter and that person has been banned.”
It comes just months after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed “lefty lawyers” were blocking efforts to crack down on illegal migration, and Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote to Tory party members claiming “an activist blob of leftwing lawyers, civil servants and the Labour party” had opposed the Government’s attempts to curb small-boat crossings in the Channel.
Terms such as “lefty lawyers” and “activist blob of leftwing lawyers” are “frequently employed in discussions on immigration and asylum matters and practitioners”, the Immigration Lawyers Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) said.
On August 8 the Home Office announced it was establishing a taskforce to crack down on “crooked lawyers” who coach “illegal migrants to lie” after the Daily Mail reported that a handful of lawyers were doing so.
The following week the ILPA wrote to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister, warning that “practitioners representing migrants find themselves targeted”.
“Lawyers must be allowed to perform their professional duties without fear for their safety and with the appropriate safeguards should their security be threatened or compromised,” the letter said.
In response the Home Office said it “regularly” reviews language it uses around “emotive” topics of asylum and immigration.
But Mr Makhlouf said that’s “laughable”.
“The Home Office has over recent months, if not years, taken a much more strident position on social media…making sweeping judgments about categories of asylum seekers.
“We’re worried that people will believe the rhetoric.”
He said that BID had received threatening letters from the public when attempted removals of asylum seekers to Rwanda were being made by the Government, and lawyers “were then being attacked for taking the cases to court”.
“We know that while asylum seekers are made the focus of attack, that lawyers are certainly put at the forefront of responsibility,” he said, adding that staff are “careful” about who they let into their London office.
Mrs McKenzie said she still feels unsafe.
“I’m still security conscious. I’m still altering routes and looking around me when I leave my house and particularly when I leave the office quite late.
“It’s absolutely appalling that just for doing our jobs we now have to have security measures and briefings from the police and security companies.
“This is unacceptable in Britain.”
Zoe Bantleman, ILPA legal director, said: “We are aware of a number of ILPA members who have been subject to threats and abuse while seeking to defend the rights of migrants and people seeking asylum.
“We urge senior members of the Government, including the Prime Minister and Home Secretary, to lead by example, to change their rhetoric so that practitioners representing some of the most vulnerable in society can carry out their professional obligations without fear for their safety."
A Home Office spokesperson said: “While the majority of lawyers act with integrity – we know that some are lying to help illegal migrants game the system. It is not right or fair on those who play by the rules.
“It is unacceptable that lawyers are being threatened for doing their job and we urge anyone who has been targeted to report it to the police.”
