Two-thirds of immigration enforcement visits in 2025 ended without an arrest, freedom of information disclosures show, raising questions about the intelligence behind an expanded operation involving workplace raids, home raids and spot checks.
Of 23,538 enforcement engagements, 15,578 resulted in no arrest, equivalent to 66.1 per cent. The total number of engagements amounted to about 60 a day. The figures cover different types of enforcement activity, rather than workplace raids alone.
Critics have accused Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s expanded enforcement operation of pursuing speculative raids based on weak intelligence. The Home Office vigorously disputes that characterisation, saying intelligence is thoroughly examined before raids and pointing to a substantial increase in arrests.
The dispute concerns both the results of enforcement activity and its consequences for people legally entitled to work. A case at an Indian restaurant in Camborne, Cornwall, involved an employee who was handcuffed and then de-arrested when his sister produced his identification.
What the figures show
The disclosures show that a warrant was used in 25.81 per cent of visits where officers accessed premises. That figure relates specifically to visits involving access, and should not be read as a proportion of every enforcement engagement recorded during the year.
A former immigration officer said officers can also enter premises through consent or powers under the Licensing Act. The absence of a warrant does not, by itself, establish that entry was unlawful. The officer nevertheless said those routes do not prevent raids based on old or uncorroborated tip-offs.
The figures also show that 89 per cent of leads alleging immigration crime came from members of the public or Crimestoppers, while about 2 per cent came from police. These are figures about the origin of leads, not findings that the allegations contained in them were accurate.
A public tip-off is an allegation that requires assessment, rather than proof of an immigration offence. The reliance on such information makes the checks carried out before a visit central to the dispute. The Home Office says those checks are thorough; critics question whether the intelligence is strong enough to justify the resulting activity.
The no-arrest total does not establish why individual visits ended that way. Nor does it show that every visit without an arrest was unjustified. It does, however, provide a measure of how frequently enforcement engagements resulted in no arrest, alongside the separate figures on warrants and the origins of leads.
Impact on a restaurant
At the restaurant in Camborne, the employee who was handcuffed was legally entitled to work. His sister produced his ID and he was de-arrested. The incident illustrates that an enforcement visit can involve restraint of a worker whose entitlement is subsequently confirmed.
The restaurant owner says trade has fallen sharply since the raid. That is the owner’s account of the business impact, rather than a quantified finding within the enforcement data. No figure for the decline in trade has been supplied.
For London readers, the broader issue is relevant to workplaces and small businesses that may face immigration checks. Employers and workers can be affected by the conduct of a visit as well as its eventual outcome. The Cornwall case is a specific example, not evidence of how every operation is carried out.
Home Office defence
The Home Office points to more than 17,000 immigration arrests since July 2024, a 122 per cent increase on the previous two years. It presents that rise as evidence of the expanded operation’s results, while rejecting the suggestion that raids amount to speculative searches.
That arrest total covers a different period from the 2025 engagement figures. Both are relevant to assessing enforcement, but they answer different questions: how many arrests have been made, and how frequently visits during a particular year ended without one.
The unresolved question is how individual leads are assessed and what happens during visits that produce no arrest. The published totals do not settle those points. For legally entitled workers and small businesses, the practical test remains whether enforcement can identify immigration offences without unnecessarily disrupting people whose right to work is not in doubt.
