Starmer's deportation of thousands of migrants isn't leadership – it's surrender to hate

Only weeks after the government broadcast footage of immigration officers raiding homes and car washes in London, Keir Starmer took to the Daily Mail to double down on hostility toward undocumented people.

The prime minister says he “gets it”. He says British people are “right to be angry about illegal migration”. And with that one line – the opening sentence – he once again, as he did after the racist riots last summer, legitimises a rising wave of anti-migrant hostility. He told the public that their resentment is not only understandable, but right.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t leadership. It’s surrender – not to truth or justice, but to hate. The kind of hate peddled by far-right parties like Reform UK.

• I’m a survivor of modern slavery – this is the shocking way I was treated by the UK government
• Families torn apart for not earning enough under ‘unfair’ visa rules: ‘I can’t take care of my husband’
• We must not allow Nigel Farage to run away from his record on Ukraine

Starmer claims to have opposed the Rwanda scheme. But Labour has not rejected the cruelty behind it – they’ve simply brought it home. His government is escalating the hostile environment: raiding workplaces, detaining undocumented people and pushing them out under the banner of “worker protection”.

They’re expanding surveillance and pressuring employers and contractors to act as border guards. Immigration enforcement is ramping up – targeting gig workers, zero-hours contractors, and people in delivery, hospitality, beauty and construction.

This isn’t protection. It’s persecution – and it’s being carried out in your name.

Starmer is right that there’s exploitation

Starmer says undocumented people are being exploited – and he’s right. But his solution is to make their lives even harder.

His government justifies its crackdown by claiming undocumented workers willingly undercut wages. But this is a lie built on political convenience.

Undocumented people don’t “exploit the system” – they are exploited by it. They work in the shadows because there’s no route to safety. They accept poverty wages because there’s no access to justice. They remain silent because speaking up could mean detention or removal.

You don’t fix that with raids and persecution. You fix it by ending the conditions that make exploitation possible – by giving people the means to regularise their status and access the protections every person needs to live with dignity.

Labour, allegedly the party of working people, doesn’t want to do that. They want the optics of control. But at what cost?

Undocumented people are already part of this country

At Regularise, we see the truth every day. Undocumented people are simply trying to live safely, contribute, and meet their basic needs – not to cause harm. They are carers, cleaners, couriers, cooks, and builders. Some are artists. Others were nurses, engineers, or teachers in the countries they came from. Many have lived here for years. Some are raising children who know no other home but the UK. They pay taxes through what they buy and contribute in countless ways – yet they remain locked out.

A friend of mine came to the UK to study and become a medical engineer. One crisis derailed his status. He couldn’t go home – so he stayed. His bank account was frozen. His driver’s licence was revoked. He now works unstable jobs, often exploited, still dreaming of working in healthcare. He hasn’t seen his mother in 15 years. She died before he could say goodbye.

This is who the raids are targeting. These are the lives Labour is crushing. These are the dreams being extinguished in the name of “security”. Security for who?

Other countries are choosing dignity – the UK is choosing cruelty

While Britain ramps up removals, Spain is doing the opposite. Their parliament will regularise 300,000 undocumented people per year – because they understand that recognising people’s rights strengthens society.

Regularisation promotes stability, economic participation, dignity, and community. It protects all workers. It builds trust. It reflects reality.

What the UK is doing instead is pure callousness – cruelty designed to appease those shouting loudest by punishing those made most vulnerable.

What we need: regularisation, rights and reconciliation

Starmer says his approach is sleeves-rolled-up, serious, and practical. But what’s practical about putting barriers in front of a woman delivering your dinner? What’s moral about punishing the very people holding our society together?

We don’t need more hostility. We need to face a simple truth: migration is a fact of life – not a problem.
People are undocumented because governments make them that way. They can unmake it, too.

At Regularise, we call for an accessible, affordable, and inclusive pathway to regularised status for all undocumented people. We also call for labour and housing rights to be upheld, regardless of immigration status, and for an end to the toxic political rhetoric that dehumanises and scapegoats migrants

You can’t fight exploitation by criminalising those being exploited. You can’t build trust with lies. And you cannot create a just society on a foundation of raids, hate and exclusion.

Starmer has made his choice. But the rest of us still have one: to fight for a future rooted in freedom, dignity, rights – and justice for all.

Munya Radzi is founder and campaigner at Regularise. Sign the open letter for Rights Not Raids and support the call for regularisation and a safer path to settlement and citizenship for undocumented people, visit regularise.org.

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