The UK already has its own version of ICE. Reform UK and the far-right dream of taking that sinister approach even further

When Reform UK politicians recently voiced support for Donald Trump’s Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), it was a double-take moment. Was the UK already becoming Trump’s America?

The comments were made after ICE kidnapping and arresting children (including a two-year-old baby!). Last month, enforcement agents in Minneapolis fatally shot two unarmed civilians in a matter of weeks. Renée Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who was volunteering as a legal observer to ICE’s operations was shot dead on 7 January. Weeks later, and just a mile down the road, masked federal agents killed Alex Pretti, who had been protesting ICE’s presence in the city after Good’s killing.

Rather than condemning the scenes, Joseph Boam, a Reform councillor in Leicestershire shared an “I stand with ICE” Homeland Security graphic, which he deleted shortly after. Reform’s London mayoral candidate, Laila Cunningham told GB News that the UK needs “a strong border force, like ICE”. Reform councillor Mick Cockerham went further, saying that ICE techniques should be used on “woke interfering lefties”. He said this in response to London mayor Sadiq Khan warning that Reform would bring ICE to the UK. Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said if her party won power, they’d launch a US-style ICE force and deport 150,000 undocumented migrants per year.

The rhetoric is hardline, signalling that many politicians are raring to import policies straight from Trump’s playbook. However, it is not only the far-right adopting this kind of messaging. The Labour government has been publicising its Home Office raids on TikTok and tweeting deportation figures, showing just how tough it wants to appear on immigration. The question now is, will the far-right go further and turn its Trump-style ICE fantasy into a reality?

The UK already has its own ICE (sort of)

“While what is happening in the US is a more violent version or more extremely violent version of the kind of immigration politics we have here, we do have some of this politics here already,” Senior policy and research officer at Refugee Action, Ben Whitham tells Left Foot Forward.

Whitham later sends me a link to a blog post written by Right to Remain, which talks about the UK’s own ICE (Immigration Compliance and Enforcement) teams. The UK’s ICE teams were set up in 2012 as a distinct law enforcement command to the former UK Border Agency. The Home Office’s ICE teams carry out raids in workplaces and people’s homes. Right to Remain points out that under Labour, ICE teams have become far more active. 

According to Home Office figures, “Between 1 July 2024 and 31 December 2025 Immigration Enforcement teams made more than 12,322 arrests of people in illegal working visits, an 83% increase on the same period immediately 18 months prior.”

Raids as photo opportunities

In 2026, we’re living in a reality whereby immigration raids are seen as political opportunities to chase the anti-migration vote. Whitham says that “successive governments of both main parties have used those immigration raids as photo opportunities for politicians, to demonstrate that they are tough”.  

He says that the raids are used in a “very performative” way “to say we’re out there in the street raiding workplaces and locking people up and deporting people”. 

Jake Atkinson, a spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition, is quick to make the same point: “We should make no mistake that when people look at what’s happening in the US, this is already happening here.”

“We have our own version of ICE,” he says, again referring to the raids that the Home Office carries out in people’s homes and communities.

Atkinson also warns that the expansion of police use of facial recognition under Labour, as well as the crackdown on civil liberties, repeat protests and erosion of migrants’ rights is creating “an increasingly authoritarian state”. 

He adds that Starmer is giving someone like Farage, “who already wants to strip back human rights and holds more radical positions, the infrastructure to enact a vision they want to replicate from the US”.

The far-right fantasy

While the UK’s approach to immigration is not a million miles away from what we’re seeing in places like Minneapolis or the apartment raids in Chicago, Whitham does not expect similar scenes in London or Manchester anytime soon.

He says that “to some extent, this is about that sort of far-right fantasy of power and violence, that they want to see on our streets.”

Whitham explains that Reform and Kemi Badenoch want to use that “imagery to mobilise among their supporters and potential supporters, a sense of being able to wield really brutal power and do further harm to marginalised communities in the UK”.

“That far right fantasy would be a lot harder to realise in the UK,” he explains. Whitham points to the fact that the UK does not have a federal system nor powerful enforcement agencies like ICE that are heavily influenced by the President.

Gun culture

In addition, both Whitham and Atkinson noted key differences between the UK and the US in terms of law enforcement and gun culture. Police fatally shoot around three people per year in the UK. In the US, more than 1,000 people a year are killed by police.

However, Atkinson warns that it is “not out of the realm of possibility” for UK police to start using lethal force against unarmed members of the public, as we are seeing in Minneapolis.

“When Nigel Farage and others talk about importing an ICE-style taskforce to the UK, we need to understand that it opens the door to that possibility that we will see more armed personnel on the streets and that is intimidating to our communities,” he explains. 

He adds: “That’s absolutely why people need to resist any further encroachment of this kind from the US.”

Resisting ICE

It might be a far-right fantasy, but it doesn’t mean that Farage, Badenoch and others on the right won’t try to bring Trump’s ICE to the UK.

“This should be a wake-up call,” Atkinson says. “We need to step up and meet the moment, as we’ve seen in Minneapolis, it’s not enough for people to see it and be shocked.”

He adds that people who have been observing and monitoring ICE operations and warning their communities, as Good and Pretti did, have “saved people”. “It has given them the chance to get away and hide with their neighbours,” he says.

In the UK, people can help by getting involved in local community defence groups and anti-raid organisations. Atkinson also encourages people to work with migrant rights groups such as Praxis and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Migrants. 

The Stop Trump Coalition has held protests in UK cities, including Leeds, London and Edinburgh to show solidarity with those resisting ICE in the US.

Politicians must stop appeasing the far-right

Alongside campaigning against raids and immigration enforcement activities, Atkinson says “we must demand that politicians stop appeasing the far-right here”. 

Whitham explains that the rise of the far-right in the UK is partly due to mainstream political parties “relentlessly punching down at migrants as though they were the cause of our wider socioeconomic decline”.

Blaming migrants has been seen “as a cheaper, easier way of trying to address the deep crises we have rather than tackling them in a more substantial way,” he adds.

Yet, as recently as in his 2020 leadership campaign, Starmer himself said: “Low wages, poor housing, poor public services are not the fault of people who come here: they’re political failure.”

Whitham says: “We need to get back to that kind of understanding, which was always correct and true, but in office, the government has completely abandoned that.”

After all, if migration were really to blame for the cost-of-living crisis, low wages and a lack of affordable housing, then Trump’s ICE, and the hostile environment policies under the Tories and now Labour would have magically solved all of those issues by now, wouldn’t they?

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

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