Five years after Kenmure Street, let’s have a heart to heart.
The resistance in Glasgow was powerful.
A community came together and stopped an immigration raid.
It showed real solidarity in practice.
But since then, tens of thousands more raids have happened across the UK under both the Tories and Labour.
Since coming into power, immigration raids, detentions, and coerced removals have been ramped up by the Labour government.
From July 2024 to December 2025 alone, there were more than 17,000 immigration raids in the UK.
That’s more than 30 raids every single day.
If Kenmure Street represented what resistance looks like, then we have needed over 30 Kenmure Streets every day.
The vast majority of raids take place without much public knowledge.
They happen: at workplaces, at homes, at train stations, on the street, construction sites, inside restaurants, nail bars and warehouses — in communities already marginalised.
Most people only hear about them if:
- they or their community are targets
- they witness someone being detained,
- a loved one suddenly disappears into detention,
- or someone never comes home.
One friend said:
“I am afraid of leaving the house.
Whenever I walk outside, I am worried there could be a van waiting around the corner for me.
Every time I see a police van, my heart races.
I think maybe this is the day they take me away.”
This is not a way to live.
Undocumented people are neither disposable nor pariahs.
We are human beings.
We belong in our communities.
We are home.
We need communities of resistance and support everywhere.
But we also need to be honest:
Local networks matter. But alone they can’t stop a system carrying out tens of thousands of raids across UK & NI.
Even after Kenmure Street, raids in Glasgow have continued.
Many more people like Lakhvir and Sumit continue to face extreme precarity, exploitation, immigration raids and detention — all driven by systemic exclusion.
There are an estimated 600,000 to 1.2 million undocumented people living in the UK.
Many have lived here more than 5, 10, 15, even 20 or more years.
Hundreds of thousands of people being excluded, exploitated, and threatened with detention and removal from UK.
They are our neighbours. Our friends.
Part of our communities.
That is why regularisation matters.
Regularisation is not impossible.
It is already happening elsewhere.
Spain is currently regularising hundreds of thousands of undocumented people.
That means hundreds of thousands of people who will no longer face detention, forced removal, or exclusion from basic rights.
The same can happen here.
But we need you.
Kenmure Street showed what solidarity can look like in the face of acute state violence.
Spain shows what becomes possible when movements come together to defend undocumented communities and advance rights alongside them.
This is not about political branding or ideological posturing.
This is about human rights & the lives of those affected by these issues.
Let’s get it done. Regularisation now!
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