Ex-Scotland Office minister joins call to purge illegal immigrants
John Lamont, the Scottish Conservative MP who was previously the shadow Scottish secretary, was one of 16 MPs to sign a motion to 'restore confidence' in the 'security of our borders', alongside the former Reform UK members James McMurdock and Rupert Lowe.
The early-day motion 'urges the government to implement a comprehensive national strategy to identify, detain, and deport all individuals found to be residing in the United Kingdom illegally'.
It expresses grave concern at the continued presence of more than a million illegal immigrants in the UK and notes the considerable cost to the taxpayer in housing, processing and supporting individuals with no legal right to remain.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Number of offers made to prospective students by universities at record high
The number of offers made to prospective undergraduate students from universities and colleges has reached a record high, Ucas figures show. More than nine in 10 (94.5%) of all students who applied before the January deadline are going into the results period having received at least one offer, according to the university admissions service. As of June 30, the final deadline to apply to up to five courses simultaneously, more than two million main scheme offers had been made by universities and colleges – a rise of 3.8% compared with last year. Increases in offers from universities and colleges can be seen across all major applicant groups, but the largest increases can be seen for international applicants outside of the EU which are up 10.7%. It comes as university leaders have been warning of financial concerns due to a drop in the number of overseas students – who can be charged higher tuition fees – following restrictions introduced by the former Tory government. Universities are in a 'scramble for students' in a bid to avoid redundancies and course closures due to growing financial pressures, a higher education expert has suggested. The latest Ucas figures, released on Thursday, show that the number of UK 18-year-old applicants to courses by June 30 has reached a record high of 328,390, up 2.2% compared with the same point last year. But the data, which has been published ahead of A-level results day next month, shows that the application rate – the proportion of the 18-year-old population in the UK who applied – has fallen to 41.2% from 41.9% last year. Overall, the total number of applicants – of all ages and all domiciles – has risen to 665,070 this year, a 1.3% increase compared with 2024. There have been 138,460 international undergraduate applicants through Ucas, an increase of 2.2% compared with the same point last year. The data shows a new record number of applicants from China, up by 10% to 33,870 applicants this year, as well as year-on-year increases in applicants from Nigeria (plus 23%) and the USA ( plus 14%). Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) think tank, told the PA news agency: 'Universities nearly always prefer to fill their places than to have to close courses or make staff redundant, so I am not surprised that they are in such a scramble for students. 'Moreover, universities currently lose money on average on each home student but, if you can enrol a few more students on lots of your courses, then fewer of your courses will make a financial loss. 'There is also a fear among some universities of applicants moving up the 'prestige chain' by securing a place at the most selective university they can, meaning some universities think they need to make more offers than they otherwise might.' He added: 'It is very worrying that the participation rate among 18-year-olds is down because it means the post-Covid picture of falling demand among school leavers is persisting. 'We need to ask if falling demand for higher education is now a trend rather than a blip. 'It seems the cost of living among students is biting and that some school leavers are waiting to see if other options come good.' Jo Saxton, chief executive at Ucas, said: 'The record number of UK 18-year-old applicants, and record number of offers being made to prospective undergraduate students, reflects real confidence in the higher education sector. 'It's great to see young people eager to take the next step in their educational and career journey, and universities and colleges committed to welcoming them. 'In the run-up to results day, I'd like to remind students and their families to remember that while the vast majority of applicants secure their first choice each year, it's always worth having a plan B. 'My advice is to begin by revisiting all of your original five choices on your Ucas application as your starting point.' A spokesperson for Universities UK (UUK) said: 'The proportion of 18-year-olds going to university is relatively stable, after a long period of growth, and in terms of absolute numbers of applications, it is a record year. 'These applicants will form the future workforce, and our country desperately needs the skills that universities will equip them with. 'Government data shows that some of the UK's highest potential employment sectors are hungry for people with graduate level skills.'
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Ice activity on historic Japanese site evokes painful legacy of incarceration
John Tonai was enraged when he learned that a human-made island in San Pedro Bay was being used as a staging ground for the workplace raids unfolding across Los Angeles. To Tonai, Terminal Island isn't just one of the country's busiest container ports. It's the site of a small fishing village where his parents and thousands of other Japanese immigrants helped establish California's tuna-canning industry. His ancestors were also among the first Japanese Americans to be rounded up and forced into concentration camps during the second world war – a dark chapter in American history that Tonai said echoes the current deportation campaign. At a recent press conference on Terminal Island, standing beside a memorial dedicated to the Japanese fishers, Tonai invoked his family's story to defend the undocumented immigrant workers under attack today. 'I wanted to channel Dad because that was his home, that was where he was born,' he said. 'He would have been furious if he were still here.' Over the past two weeks, local activist groups said they've observed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) vehicles entering and exiting Terminal Island, using a federal prison and coast guard facility to prepare for ongoing actions around Los Angeles county. To some Japanese American organizers protesting against the raids, Ice presence on the island dredges up painful memories, as well as a sense that past injustices are repeating themselves. 'There's a particular nerve for me that's struck in them using Terminal Island in this way,' said Maya Suzuki Daniels, a San Pedro high school teacher whose relatives were incarcerated at a camp in Arizona. 'At some point, I'd like our country to be known for something other than mass incarceration.' Suzuki Daniels, who volunteers with Harbor Area Peace Patrols, which monitors Ice activity in the South Bay area, said the group has tracked Ice vehicles leaving Terminal Island at the crack of dawn to those executing raids around LA throughout the day. 'Every single day, we have people who see Ice vehicles, Ice agents doing their staging meetings and briefings before they go out,' she said. Ice agents have detained nearly 2,800 people in LA since the raids began 6 June, according to homeland security figures released Tuesday. As arrests mounted, community groups have continued pushing local officials to banish Ice from Terminal Island, hosting a vigil and a 4 July gathering to increase pressure. Ice did not respond to a request for comment. The Los Angeles port police department said it had denied a request from the Department of Homeland Security to use port property. The department also confirmed that it had no involvement with Ice on immigration matters. For much of the 20th century, Terminal Island boasted a diverse working-class community of immigrants from Italy, Yugoslavia and, most of all, Japan. From the early 1900s to 1942, immigrants from Japan's Wakayama prefecture transformed Terminal Island into a vibrant, tight-knit fishing village, said Naomi Hirahara, a local historian and co-author of Terminal Island: Lost Communities on America's Edge. At the start of the second world war, more than 3,000 Japanese residents were living in what was known as Fish Harbor. The men fished for tuna with long bamboo poles while the women worked in the canneries. Families prayed together at the Shinto shrine or the Buddhist temples; they attended dances and concerts at Fishermen Hall. Second-generation Japanese Americans, the nisei, competed in judo and baseball. 'There was a vital community and evidence for that is that, 80 years later, the descendants still come together,' Hirahara said. Everything changed when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The FBI swiftly arrested Japanese leaders and fishers, ransacking their homes for contraband to confirm unfounded suspicions that they were spies for the Japanese military. The men were sent to a federal prison and didn't see or contact their families for months. The next February, under executive order 9066, the remaining Terminal Island residents were ordered to evacuate the island in 48 hours and, subsequently, forced into concentration camps. When they returned four years later, almost the entire enclave had been razed for military use. Many families resettled in Long Beach and the South Bay; former fishers became gardeners and produce farmers. All that remains from the once-thriving fishing community are a pair of vacant buildings now at risk of demolition. Hirahara said economic discrimination against Japanese people had been brewing long before Pearl Harbor. Since the 1920s, she said, local officials had been targeting Japanese fishers by denying them commercial fishing licenses while affording the privilege to Yugoslavian and Italian immigrants. For Hirahara, the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans and the current immigration crisis differs in at least one major way. While the detention of Japanese fishers was very calculated, she said, the worksite raids seemed more arbitrary, as if anyone of any racial background could be picked up. But much like enforcement operations against undocumented immigrants today, Hirahara said, the government first targeted Japanese men while leaving behind their wives and children who had no way of providing for themselves. 'These are working people who are being rounded up,' she said. 'They're breadwinners who might be supporting their whole families.' This article was amended on 16 July 2025 to clarify that Maya Suzuki Daniels's relatives were incarcerated at a camp in Arizona, not her parents.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Trump administration sued for arresting people at immigration courts
Twelve immigrants and their legal advocates filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday against the Trump administration, alleging that the justice department and the Department of Homeland Security colluded to arrest and deport potentially thousands of people at their immigration hearings. A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups – including the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services (RAICES), National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), Democracy Forward and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area (LCCRSF) – filed the suit on behalf of 12 plaintiffs, the majority of whom were seeking protection in the US from anti-LGBTQ+ violence or female genital mutilation. In May, federal authorities began arresting people at US immigration courts from New York and Arizona to Washington state in what appeared to be a coordinated operation. The following month, New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested while attending immigration court with one migrant. Since then, the supreme court has granted the Trump administration permission to deport migrants to countries they are not from, including to conflict-ridden places such as South Sudan. 'The Trump administration has cast an unconscionably wide net to ensnare people and families who attend immigration court hearings in compliance with their legal obligations, only to face life-threatening imprisonment, swift removal and the prospect of indefinite family separation,' said Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer at RAICES. 'The egregious and unprecedented coordination amongst government agencies that we are witnessing not only inflicts irreparable harm upon infants and adults alike for seeking refuge in the US, but also establishes a chilling precedent in which law and order are abandoned in favor of stoking widespread panic and fear – leaving the entire American public at risk, regardless of immigration status.' The lawsuit asserts that the Trump administration 'stripped people of basic due process rights afforded under US immigration law and the fifth amendment in order to place them in expedited removal proceedings and deport them without hearings', the plaintiffs said in a press release. All twelve of the plaintiffs were arrested at immigration hearings where they were requesting asylum or other legal protection to remain in the US. All but two remain in detention. One was already deported to Ecuador where he is now living in hiding due to his advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. Some of the plaintiffs had lived in the US for years, and have been separated from US citizen family members. Their legal advocates say that homeland security and the justice department are pivoting away from a longstanding tradition of limiting arrests in immigration courts that could discourage people from appearing at their hearings. 'These directives forsake any notion of immigration courts as a neutral forum, weaponizing them into a trap for immigrants who show up in reliance on the American promise of a fair process before a judge, only to be met instead with handcuffs and shunted into a fast-track deportation process controlled by Ice agents,' said Jordan Wells, senior staff attorney at LCCRSF. The case was filed in US district court in the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs ask the judge to declare Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and immigration court guidance 'arbitrary and capricious' and vacate those guidelines.
