Will Keir Starmer's migration crackdown finally let Britain ‘take back control'?
Standing before a row of nodding Cabinet members, the Labour leader solemnly declared that Britain's 'experiment is over' with mass immigration before repeatedly cited the old Brexit slogan about 'taking back control' of Britain's borders.
The British government says its new white paper on immigration is about restoring control and creating a system which 'promotes growth but is controlled and managed'.
But how did a man, who previously opposed Brexit, called for the return of free movement between Britain and the EU, and who said 'we welcome migrants, we don't scapegoat them', change his views so radically?
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How does Starmer justify this U-turn on migration? What has changed for legal migrants planning to work or study in the UK?
And can the Labour leader get away with taking a position at odds with many of his own MPs and Labour supporters?
Today on The Irish Times In The News podcast, London correspondent Mark Paul discusses the implications of the British prime minister's new hardline approach to immigration.
Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Declan Conlon.
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Irish Times
17 hours ago
- Irish Times
Thousands of Guatemalans deported from US with nothing more than the contents of a white plastic sack
'Maybe you have left your family in the US but the same god who is here in Guatemala is there in the US,' says a local church volunteer at La Aurora Air Force Base in Guatemala city. The volunteer is leading more than 90 Guatemalans in prayer. They have just stepped off a US deportation flight and are being processed at the Centre for Returnees. Before being deported, the Guatemalans were held at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Alexandria, Louisiana. Amid a far-reaching crackdown on immigration by US president Donald Trump , La Aurora base has received more than 266 US deportation flights this year, according to Witness at the Border. More than 24,000 Guatemalans have been deported from the US in 2025, according to data from the Guatemalan Institute for Migration. An official at the state-backed reception centre for returnees at La Aurora base says most people now being deported have spent long periods in the US and often have children with US citizenship. READ MORE Wearing the standard grey tracksuit supplied at US detention centres, 45-year-old electrician Pablo Vélez says he had feared being detained in the months leading up to his arrest by Ice in California. 'My father was murdered in Guatemala and both my mother and brother were granted asylum in the US,' says deportee Pablo Vélez. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy 'A lot of the Guatemalan community in California are staying at home and not even leaving for work right now,' he says. Vélez was detained while attending court to apply for asylum two months earlier. 'My father was murdered in Guatemala and both my mother and brother were granted asylum in the US,' says Vélez. He didn't apply for asylum when they did, but later travelled with a smuggler – known locally as a 'coyote' – to join his family in the US. In California he married an American-born Mexican woman, with whom he has an 18-year-old son. Vélez says he was deported from the US in 2008 but returned in 2015 with help from another smuggler. Now separated from his wife, he's unsure whether he'll find work as an electrician in Guatemala. Vélez says a nephew is going to pick him up and he says he will begin to build a life in Guatemala once again. [ What it would take for America to deport 11 million immigrants Opens in new window ] Under Trump's new Detained Parents Directive , family separations are likely to increase as Ice's obligations to facilitate reunification of parents with their children before deportation are weakened. An official at the airbase recalls one distressed woman arriving earlier this year who had been separated from her young daughter when she was deported from the US. The official says more than 800 Guatemalan minors have been deported this year and the youngest child he saw on a deportation flight was three years old. In July the US Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated record funding to the US's deportation system, including $45 billion for detention, $14.4 billion for deportation and $10 billion to expand Ice. 'The budget for immigration detention is now more than 62 per cent larger than the budget for the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons,' stated the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit advocacy group. 'With the vast scope and scale of these resources, the number of people removed after long periods in the US is very certain to grow.' Bags containing belongings confiscated in the US and returned via Guatemalan authorities. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy Some Guatemalan deportees are returning with nothing. Most, however, collect a white plastic sack containing belongings confiscated by US authorities and returned via Guatemalan authorities. Guatemala's government has rolled out a new Return Home Plan that offers some services to deportees. But the usual network of NGOs, churches and state agencies is under strain due to USAid cuts imposed by the Trump administration. Begging has visibly increased in the centre of Guatemala City. Marisela Tzul (35), who asks to be referred to by her middle name, was handed a small brown bag of food and a hygiene pack, and is tying her shoes with new laces – it is standard practice in US detention facilities to remove detainee's laces to prevent self-harm. [ US Ice agents took half their workforce. What do they do now? Opens in new window ] Marisela, originally from Totonicapán, travelled to the US with a coyote in 2023. She was working at a garment factory in Los Angeles until 50 days ago when she was detained by IC agents. 'The owner of the factory saw Ice agents entering the factory beside us and she just handed us over to them,' says Marisela. She and nine others – seven Guatemalans and two Mexicans – were arrested. Over the next 50 days she was transferred from California to Nevada, then Arizona, Texas and finally Louisiana. Marisela says she doesn't want to talk about conditions at the centres – 'it was terrible.' She says she was only informed that she would be deported at 3am two days earlier. 'No one in my family knows I'm here,' she says. She has had no contact with them since she was detained. Guatemalan consular officials have reported challenges in accessing Guatemalan citizens in some US detention facilities. Marisela Tzul (35) was handed a small brown bag of food. Photograph: Hannah McCarthy After being processed most deportees board a large yellow bus to either temporary shelter or Guatemala City's central bus station, where they will make their own way home. But some families are waiting outside the airbase for their loved ones. Young men who appeared stoic moments before crumble as they meet their parents who hold them tightly as they sob.
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
Zohran Mamdani has turned the politics of richest city in US on its head
In June Donald Trump , having manufactured a crisis over alleged obstruction in California of round-ups by his immigration police (ICE), flexed his authoritarian muscles, federalising the state national guard and deploying marines to back them up. Critics warned of the militarisation of the repression of dissent. This week the LA dress rehearsal was followed up – federal troops sent in to Washington, DC on the spurious pretext that it is awash with violent crime. In fact violent crime is at a 30-year low. And the president, determined to warn Democratic cities that he will not be defied and has the power effectively to take them over, threatened similar treatment to three other Democratic strongholds – Chicago, Baltimore and Oakland. He spoke to his real agenda: 'If a communist gets elected,' he said, 'we have tremendous power … to run places when we have to'. As The New York Times points out , the contrast between Trump's enthusiastic deployment of force against a mythical crime wave, and his refusal to intervene against mobs storming Congress speaks volumes. READ MORE A communist in America? Some chance. Except that, horror of horrors for Trump and the city's billionaire class, there is a very real chance that in November the New York mayoralty election will see a charismatic 33-year-old state assemblyman, self-confessed 'socialist' Zohran Mamdani, top the poll. A 'communist', complains Trump, who has spoken of depriving him of his citizenship and of jailing him for interfering with immigrant arrests. The administration is also suing the city for its refusal to co-operate with ICE. [ This man could be just what the American left needs Opens in new window ] Mamdani, born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents, became a US citizen in 2018 and has attracted widespread controversy over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. He has brought a new dynamism to the left, stunning the political establishment with a sweeping victory, 'the biggest political upset in the city's history', in the city's Democratic primary in June . He took 56 per cent of the vote, 12 per cent more than next-placed, party leadership favourite, discredited former governor Andrew Cuomo. Controversy over Mamdani's immigration status follows a chorus of Islamophobic attacks on his Muslim faith, not to mention his unapologetic membership of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the organisational backbone of his campaign. Remarkably, however, polls show him galvanising significant Jewish support. Young people have flocked to him. The DSA traces its dramatic growth to the mid-2010s in the wake of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders' run for president and Trump's 2016 presidential victory. It now boasts some 80,000 members, 10,000 of them in New York, the core of the 60,000 well-drilled door-to-door canvassers who mobilised in the primary. Mamdani's success will offer it a huge national platform, reigniting a rich but largely eclipsed socialist tradition in American politics. Until recently 'socialist' remained largely a term of political insult. Now, according to a recent poll by the conservative Cato Institute, more Democrats have positive views of socialism (67 per cent) than capitalism (50 per cent), while among Americans under 30, 62 per cent feel favourable towards socialism. The lacklustre, traditional Democratic leadership, unable to capitalise on Trump's return or reverse his capture of significant parts of its working-class base, or to break with post-911 Islamophobia, is openly hostile to the upstart candidate. But the DSA and Mamdani have turned the politics of the country's richest city, with its vastly unequal living conditions, on its head. [ Why Donald Trump is only beginning his pursuit of the 'enemy within' Opens in new window ] Billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg, now an anti-Mamdani megadonor, boasted of gentrifying the city, transforming once grimy and rundown New York into what he called 'a luxury product'. But its cash-strapped residents have turned, attracted by the DSA's radical campaign focused on New York's affordability crisis – its programme: a rent freeze, free child care and free buses, a doubling of the minimum wage, 200,000 new units of affordable housing, and expanded public services, paid for in large part by higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. The crisis created by mass deportation has also prompted Mamdani to adopt a more militant anti-ICE posture than that of almost any other US politician, enabling the party to dig deep into the city's huge ethnic populations, most notably the Hispanics. And without becoming drawn into the divisive identity politics that have so long riven New York. The political climate, The Nation columnist Spencer Ackerman writes, has been transformed by 'the detentions and renditions of restaurant cooks, delivery drivers, day labourers, and other members of New York's working class. Mamdani, without necessarily meaning to, has illuminated the way that the tools of the war on terror are the tools of class war.' [ These five factors are how Zohran Mamdani took New York by storm Opens in new window ] The campaign is on and fierce, and all rather old-fashioned. When Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren was reproached for supporting Mamdani's plans to tax the rich she retorted simply: 'Oh dear, are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?' Touché. Roll on November.
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
Sally Rooney: I support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror' under UK law, so be it
On Saturday, August 9th, UK police arrested more than 500 peaceful protesters on suspicion of terror offences. The vast majority of these arrests took place on Parliament Square, London , where Irish citizens such as Sinéad Ní Shiacáis, from Limerick, were among those detained, but in Belfast too, a woman was arrested by the PSNI. These protesters were not engaged in any violent acts, nor were they promoting any violence against any living creatures at all. And yet they may now face life-altering terror charges, some of which could result in up to 14 years in prison. Why? Because, with a full understanding of the consequences, these brave individuals chose to express support for the protest group Palestine Action. Since its foundation in 2020, Palestine Action has primarily organised direct-action protests against weapons manufacturers: defacing buildings, breaking windows and occupying factories. This summer, as the UK continued to offer material and diplomatic support for the ongoing genocide in Gaza , activists broke into an RAF airbase and used spray-paint to vandalise two aircraft. The Government responded by proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, placing the group on the same legal footing as al-Qaeda and Islamic State. The group's cofounder, Huda Ammori, is now rightly fighting this designation in the courts, but in the meantime, any expression of support for Palestine Action, even a simple placard or T-shirt, constitutes a serious terror offence under UK law. Meanwhile, the Irish Government – along with virtually every humanitarian organisation worldwide – has recognised that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine . Genocide is the gravest of international crimes and, for most of us, quite aside from any legal framework, the most abhorrent wrong imaginable. Under the Genocide Convention, to which both Ireland and the UK are signatories, nation states have a duty not only to punish but also to prevent the commission of this incomparably horrifying crime. Activists who disrupt the flow of weapons to a genocidal regime may violate petty criminal statutes, but they uphold a far greater law and a more profound human imperative: to protect a people and culture from annihilation. But while Irish citizens – including potentially here on the island of Ireland – are accused of terrorism for protesting an acknowledged genocide, the Irish Government has so far remained silent. When our citizens are arrested under authoritarian regimes elsewhere, the State and its consular services tend to spring into action, or at least purport to, in order to defend the human rights of Irish passport holders. Now that the jurisdiction in question is located next door – and indeed closer still – our leaders seem curiously unwilling to act. If the Government in Dublin truly believes that Israel is committing genocide, how can it look elsewhere while its nearest neighbour funds and supports that genocide and its own citizens are arrested simply for speaking out? READ MORE Sally Rooney: 'The ramifications for cultural and intellectual life in the UK will be profound' The arrest of a protester in Belfast surely represents a particularly egregious example of political policing. When a storm damaged an infamous loyalist mural in north Belfast last year, rebuilding commenced immediately, and the wall is now once again emblazoned with the iconography of the Ulster Volunteer Force. No arrests were made on that basis, nor has the mural been taken down, though the UVF is a proscribed terrorist organisation responsible for the murders of hundreds of civilians. Palestine Action, proscribed under the same law, is responsible for zero deaths and has never advocated the use of violence against any human being. Why then are its supporters arrested for wearing T-shirts, while murals celebrating loyalist death squads are left untouched? Can the PSNI explain this demonstrably selective enforcement of anti-terror law? Perhaps the British state should investigate the shady organisations that continue to promote my work and fund my activities, such as WH Smith and the BBC While protesters are labelled terrorists in the UK, Palestinian civilians are, of course, labelled terrorists by Israeli forces. But where UK protesters face trumped-up charges and prison sentences, Palestinians face violent death. Last weekend Israeli forces assassinated a team of Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza, including the renowned journalist Anas al-Sharif , whose work with Reuters was awarded the Pulitzer Prize last year. Rather than denying responsibility for this appalling war crime, Israel openly took credit for the assassination, claiming – with no credible evidence – that Anas al-Sharif, an accomplished and beloved reporter, was in fact a 'terrorist'. This claim, though baseless, has been repeated widely in western media in the days since. Once the special word 'terrorist' is invoked, it seems, all laws melt into air and everything is permitted. In this context I feel obliged to state once more that – like the hundreds of protesters arrested last weekend – I too support Palestine Action. If this makes me a 'supporter of terror' under UK law, so be it. My books, at least for now, are still published in Britain, and are widely available in bookshops and even supermarkets. In recent years the UK's state broadcaster has also televised two fine adaptations of my novels, and therefore regularly pays me residual fees. I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can. If the British state considers this 'terrorism', then perhaps it should investigate the shady organisations that continue to promote my work and fund my activities, such as WH Smith and the BBC. Protesters in London last weekend. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA To ensure that the British public is made aware of my position, I would happily publish this statement in a UK newspaper – but that would now be illegal. The present UK Government has willingly stripped its own citizens of basic rights and freedoms, including the right to express and read dissenting opinions, in order to protect its relationship with Israel. The ramifications for cultural and intellectual life in the UK – where the eminent poet Alice Oswald has already been arrested, and an increasing number of artists and writers can no longer safely travel to Britain to speak in public – are and will be profound. But as Sinéad Ní Shiacáis said after her arrest last weekend: 'We are not the story; the Palestinian people are the story. They are begging people to give them a voice.' Palestine Action has been among the strongest of those voices in the UK, taking direct steps to halt the seemingly unstoppable machinery of violence. We owe their courageous activists our gratitude and solidarity. And by now, almost two years into a live-streamed genocide, we owe the people of Palestine more than mere words. Sally Rooney is a novelist
