Sir Keir Starmer fears repeat of summer riots as Prime Minister demands action to repair 'fraying' Britain
The Prime Minister told his Cabinet it was vital Britain's 'social fabric' was healed amid a series of protests outside taxpayer-funded hotels housing asylum seekers.
He also said cultural integration in communities that have experienced high levels of migration must be improved.
Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, warned that immigration was having a 'profound impact on society'.
She said the government must acknowledge 'real concerns' from voters about the impact rapid demographic change is having on issues such as housing and public services, The Times reported.
During a Cabinet awayday last month, Downing Street's executive director of policy and delivery Liz Lloyd said that social cohesion was 'fraying at the edges'.
There are concerns of more unrest after demonstrations outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex led to the largest outbreak of street violence in England since last summer's riots.
Police also surrounded a hotel in Canary Wharf on Tuesday as protesters descended on the venue amid reports it was to be used as a migrant hotel.
It came after resident Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, who came to Britain on small boat last month, was charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity, and one count of harassment without violence.
Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League, has suggested he may make an appearance on Sunday with thousands of supporters.
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, told reporters on Monday that Britain was close to 'civil disobedience on a vast scale'.
Next week marks the one-year anniversary of the Southport murders that led to far-Right rallies outside mosques and hostels.
Sir Keir claims that social media and school absence, as well as small boat crossings, are encouraging people to retreat into 'parallel lives'.
Rayner added that 'economic insecurity, the rapid pace of deindustrialisation, immigration and the impacts on local communities and public services, technological change and the amount of time people were spending alone online', along with 'declining trust in institutions', were having a 'profound impact on society'.
According to a Downing Street spokesman, Rayner said it 'was incumbent on the government to acknowledge the real concerns people have and to deliver improvements to people's lives in their communities'.
She pointed out that 17 of the 18 areas worst affected by last year's riots were among the most deprived in the country, adding that 'while Britain was a successful multi-ethnic, multi-faith country, the government had to show it had a plan to address people's concerns'.
In a presentation to ministers at Chequers, Lloyd said a 'more forceful' policy on law and order would be needed to restore waning trust in the state.
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Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Police issue update as protest groups gathered outside Essex hotel
Peaceful protests took place outside an Essex hotel this afternoon, police confirmed. Specific measures were put in place by Essex Police as further protests took place outside The Bell Hotel in Epping. A ban on face coverings and designated areas for protestors and counter-protestors were introduced to allow calm procedures. A group of protesters against The Bell Hotel formed at around 1pm and officers facilitated a march by a group of counter-protests from the tube station to their designated area at 4pm before escorting them back a short time later. Chief Superintendent Simon Anslow said: 'I want to thank those who attended for the peaceful nature of both protests. 'Our role is to ensure that you can express your democratic right to protest safely and lawfully and we had a proportionate and robust plan in place to ensure that could happen. 'I am pleased that today has passed off without incident and I am grateful to our colleagues from other forces for their support.' A police spokesman confirmed three arrests were made on Sunday. A 52-year-old man from Loughton on suspicion of a public order offence, a 53-year-old Loughton woman, from the anti-hotel protest group, on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence connected with a previous protest, and a 27-year-old woman, from the counter-protest group, on suspicion of criminal damage and a public order offence. They are all currently in custody.
Miami Herald
an hour ago
- Miami Herald
Trump boasts of deporting the ‘worst of the worst.' LA raids tell a far different story
LOS ANGELES - They called them the 'worst of the worst.' For more than a month and a half, the Trump administration has posted a barrage of mugshots of L.A. undocumented immigrants with long rap sheets. Officials have spotlighted Cuong Chanh Phan, a 49-year-old Vietnamese man convicted in 1997 of second-degree murder for his role in slaying two teens at a high school graduation party. They have shared blurry photos on Instagram of a slew of convicted criminals such as Rolando Veneracion-Enriquez, a 55-year-old Filipino man convicted in 1996 of sexual penetration with a foreign object with force and assault with intent to commit a felony. And Eswin Uriel Castro, a Mexican convicted in 2002 of child molestation and in 2021 of assault with a deadly weapon. But the immigrants that the Department of Homeland Security showcase in X posts and news releases do not represent the majority of immigrants swept up across Los Angeles. As the number of immigration arrests in the L.A. region quadrupled from 540 in April to 2,185 in June, seven out of 10 immigrants arrested in June had no criminal conviction - a trend that immigrant advocates say belies administration claims that they are targeting 'heinous illegal alien criminals' who represent a threat to public safety. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis of ICE data from the Deportation Data Project, the proportion of immigrants without criminal convictions arrested in seven counties in and around L.A. has skyrocketed from 35% in April, to 46% in May, and to 69% from June 1 to June 26. Austin Kocher, a geographer and research assistant professor at Syracuse University who specializes in immigration enforcement, said the Trump administration was not being entirely honest about the criminal status of those they were arresting. Officials, he said, followed a strategy of focusing on the minority of violent convicted criminals so they could justify enforcement policies that are proving to be less popular. 'I think they know that if they were honest with the American public that they're arresting people who cook our food, wash dishes in the kitchen, take care of people in nursing homes, people who are just living in part of the community … there's a large segment of the public, including a large segment of Trump's own supporters, who would be uncomfortable and might even oppose those kinds of immigration practices.' In Los Angeles, the raids swept up garment worker Jose Ortiz, who worked 18 years at the Ambiance Apparel clothing warehouse in downtown L.A., before being nabbed in a June 6 raid; car wash worker Jesus Cruz, a 52-year-old father who was snatched on June 8 - just before his daughter's graduation - from Westchester Hand Wash; and Emma De Paz, a recent widow and tamale vendor from Guatemala who was arrested June 19 outside a Hollywood Home Depot. Such arrests may be influencing the public's perception of the raids. Multiple polls show support for Trump's immigration agenda slipping as masked federal agents increasingly swoop up undocumented immigrants from workplaces and streets. ICE data shows that about 31% of the immigrants arrested across the L.A. region from June 1 to June 26 had criminal convictions, 11% had pending criminal charges and 58% were classified as 'other immigration violator,' which ICE defines as 'individuals without any known criminal convictions or pending charges in ICE's system of record at the time of the enforcement action.' The L.A. region's surge in arrests of noncriminals has been more dramatic than the U.S. as a whole: Arrests of immigrants with no criminal convictions climbed nationally from 57% in April to 69% in June. Federal raids here have also been more fiercely contested in Southern California - particularly in L.A. County, where more than 2 million residents are undocumented or living with undocumented family members. 'A core component of their messaging is that this is about public safety, that the people that they are arresting are threats to their communities,' said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank. 'But it's hard to maintain that this is all about public safety when you're going out and arresting people who are just going about their lives and working.' Trump never said he would arrest only criminals. Almost as soon as he retook office on Jan. 20, Trump signed a stack of executive orders aimed at drastically curbing immigration. The administration then moved to expand arrests from immigrants who posed a security threat to anyone who entered the country illegally. Yet while officials kept insisting they were focused on violent criminals, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a warning: 'That doesn't mean that the other illegal criminals who entered our nation's borders are off the table.' As White House chief adviser on border policy Tom Homan put it: 'If you're in the country illegally, you got a problem.' Still, things did not really pick up until May, when White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller ordered ICE's top field officials to shift to more aggressive tactics: arresting undocumented immigrants, whether or not they had a criminal record. Miller set a new goal: arresting 3,000 undocumented people a day, a quota that immigration experts say is impossible to reach by focusing only on criminals. 'There aren't enough criminal immigrants in the United States to fill their arrest quotas and to get millions and millions of deportations, which is what the president has explicitly promised,' Bier said. 'Immigration and Customs Enforcement says there's half a million removable noncitizens who have criminal convictions in the United States. Most of those are nonviolent: traffic, immigration offenses. It's not millions and millions.' By the time Trump celebrated six months in office, DHS boasted that the Trump administration had already arrested more than 300,000 undocumented immigrants. '70% of ICE arrests,' the agency said in a news release, 'are individuals with criminal convictions or charges.' But that claim no longer appeared to be true. While 78% of undocumented immigrants arrested across the U.S. in April had a criminal conviction or faced a pending charge, that number had plummeted to 57% in June. In L.A., the difference between what Trump officials said and the reality on the ground was more stark: Only 43% of those arrested across the L.A. region had criminal convictions or faced a pending charge. Still, ICE kept insisting it was 'putting the worst first.' As stories circulate across communities about the arrests of law-abiding immigrants, there are signs that support for Trump's deportation agenda is falling. A CBS/YouGov poll published July 20 shows about 56% of those surveyed approved of Trump's handling of immigration in March, but that dropped to 50% in June and 46% in July. About 52% of poll respondents said the Trump administration is trying to deport more people than expected. When asked who the Trump administration is prioritizing for deporting, only 44% said 'dangerous criminals.' California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass have repeatedly accused Trump of conducting a national experiment in Los Angeles. 'The federal government is using California as a playground to test their indiscriminate actions that fulfill unsafe arrest quotas and mass detention goals,' Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Newsom told The Times. 'They are going after every single immigrant, regardless of whether they have a criminal background and without care that they are American citizens, legal status holders and foreign-born, and even targeting native-born U.S. citizens.' When pressed on why ICE is arresting immigrants who have not been convicted or are not facing pending criminal charges, Trump administration officials tend to argue that many of those people have violated immigration law. 'ICE agents are going to arrest people for being in the country illegally,' Homan told CBS News earlier this month. 'We still focus on public safety threats and national security threats, but if we find an illegal alien in the process of doing that, they're going to be arrested too.' Immigration experts say that undermines their message that they are ridding communities of people who threaten public safety. 'It's a big backtracking from 'These people are out killing people, raping people, harming them in demonstrable ways,' to 'This person broke immigration law in this way or that way,'' Bier said. The Trump administration is also trying to find new ways to target criminals in California. It has threatened to withhold federal funds to California due to its 'sanctuary state' law, which limits county jails from coordinating with ICE except in cases involving immigrants convicted of a serious crime or felonies such as murder, rape, robbery or arson. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department requested California counties, including L.A., provide data on all jail inmates who are not U.S. citizens in an effort to help federal immigration agents prioritize those who have committed crimes. 'Although every illegal alien by definition violates federal law,' the U.S. Justice Department said in a news release, 'those who go on to commit crimes after doing so show that they pose a heightened risk to our Nation's safety and security.' As Americans are bombarded with dueling narratives of good vs. bad immigrants, Kocher believes the question we have to grapple with is not 'What does the data say?' Instead, we should ask: 'How do we meaningfully distinguish between immigrants with serious criminal convictions and immigrants who are peacefully living their lives?' 'I don't think it's reasonable, or helpful, to represent everyone as criminals - or everyone as saints,' Kocher said. 'Probably the fundamental question, which is also a question that plagues our criminal justice system, is whether our legal system is capable of distinguishing between people who are genuine public safety threats and people who are simply caught up in the bureaucracy.' The data, Kocher said, show that ICE is currently unable or unwilling to make that distinction. 'If we don't like the way that the system is working, we might want to rethink whether we want a system where people who are simply living in the country following laws, working in their economy, should actually have a pathway to stay,' Kocher said. 'And the only way to do that is actually to change the laws.' In the rush to blast out mugshots of some of the most criminal L.A. immigrants, the Trump administration left out a key part of the story. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, its staff notified ICE on May 5 of Veneracion's pending release after he had served nearly 30 years in prison for the crimes of assault with intent to commit rape and sexual penetration with a foreign object with force. But ICE failed to pick up Veneracion and canceled its hold on him May 19, a day before he was released on parole. A few weeks later, as ICE amped up its raids, federal agents arrested Veneracion on June 7 at the ICE office in L.A. The very next day, DHS shared his mugshot in a news release titled 'President Trump is Stepping Up Where Democrats Won't.' The same document celebrated the capture of Phan, who served nearly 25 years in prison after he was convicted of second-degree murder. CDCR said the Board of Parole Hearings coordinated with ICE after Phan was granted parole in 2022. Phan was released that year to ICE custody. But those details did not stop Trump officials from taking credit for his arrest and blaming California leaders for letting Phan loose. 'It is sickening that Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass continue to protect violent criminal illegal aliens at the expense of the safety of American citizens and communities,' DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Protesters stage demo outside hotel used to house migrants
Hundreds of anti-illegal migration protesters and pro-immigration counter-protesters have demonstrated outside a hotel being used to house migrants. Sunday saw the latest in a series of demonstrations outside The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, after an asylum seeker was charged with allegedly attempting to kiss a 14-year-old girl. Protesters waved union flags, while Stand Up To Racism counter-protesters marched to the hotel with signs reading: 'Stop scapegoating refugees and migrants'. Weyman Bennett, co-convener of Stand Up To Racism, told the PA news agency that volunteer security personnel accompanied them. He added: 'We're happy to demonstrate but we're not happy to be attacked by thugs, racists and hooligans.' One man was seen being taken away from the station area by two officers, though it was not clear if he was part of any group. Members of Stand Up To Racism were seen trying to stop people from filming the protesters, as locals watched the march from their driveways. One local man was seen chanting in support of Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, as the march went past. He began shouting 'there's only one Tommy Robinson' when a protester approached him. One Stand Up To Racism protester chanted 'fascist scum' at him before police stepped in to ensure they would not come together. Essex Police said it had established protest restrictions due to repeated serious disruption, violence, and harm to the community during previous demonstrations. The force said that there was a ban on anyone wearing face coverings and that there were designated sites opposite the hotel for protesters. A dispersal order was in effect from 12pm on Sunday until 8am on Monday, covering Epping town centre and nearby transport hubs. Both sets of protesters were kept separated by fences. Those protesting outside The Bell Hotel in Epping chose to ignore counter-demonstrators and began singing. They sang Sweet Caroline and Come On Eileen while demonstrators from Stand Up To Racism chanted 'Nazi scum off our streets'. Essex Police said that residents have reported feeling 'trapped', fearful of leaving their homes and anxious about protest activity previously. Hotel residents and staff have been advised to remain indoors after 5pm as some have experienced verbal and physical harassment, including a resident chased and injured while returning to the hotel, the force added. Essex Police said there was an 'escalation of violence' during protests on July 13, 17, 20 and 24, involving hundreds of people. The force added that officers were assaulted, missiles were thrown, vehicles were vandalised and the hotel sustained broken windows and graffiti. The Epping protest was sparked by the charging of asylum seeker Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, with sexual assault after he allegedly attempted to kiss a 14-year-old girl. He denied the charge at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court and will stand trial in August.
