The Case for a National Immigration Enforcement Force: Why Britain May Need Its Own ICE
For more than a decade, British governments of every stripe have promised stronger borders, faster asylum decisions, and a more efficient, rules based immigration system. Yet despite significant political commitment and considerable financial investment, the United Kingdom has never built the one institution that almost every other major nation with comparable levels of migration has long considered essential: a single, nationally empowered, fully resourced agency whose sole responsibility is to locate and remove those with no legal right to be in the country.
In America, this role is carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE. In Australia, it sits with the Australian Border Force and dedicated removal units. Across Europe, similar functions are embedded in national migration enforcement corps. Britain alone disperses this responsibility across a patchwork of agencies — Immigration Enforcement, Border Force, the National Crime Agency, local police forces, and a wide constellation of regulatory bodies — none of which are designed, structured, or mandated to own the entire enforcement landscape.
This fragmentation is not the fault of the individuals who work within the system, many of whom perform extremely difficult work with professionalism and commitment. Rather, it is a structural legacy that dates back decades: a model built for an era when immigration numbers were lower, when global movement was slower, and when cross border mobility lacked the speed and scale it possesses today. To understand why Britain is now struggling to keep pace with the enforcement challenge, it is necessary to understand how much the world has changed around it — and why the institutional architecture has not.
The United Kingdom’s immigration system now faces pressures on multiple fronts. The asylum caseload has grown rapidly over the past decade, driven by global instability, rising migratory flows, and the pull factors associated with the UK’s labour market and transport links. Visa routes have expanded, diversified, and become more complex. Illegal working remains a persistent issue in several low wage sectors. Organised crime groups have grown more sophisticated, using forged documentation, rapid movement strategies, and clandestine transport networks to bring people into the UK or facilitate their movement out of regular status once inside.
Against this backdrop, Interior enforcement has simply not kept pace. Officers are stretched across large geographic areas, operating within legacy systems, balancing high risk operations with administrative burdens, and managing caseloads that continue to outstrip capacity. The result is a system in which many individuals whose legal rights to remain have expired stay in the UK for months or years before removal is attempted. This is not a criticism of frontline staff. It is a sign of structural overextension.
What the UK lacks is not resolve or legislation — though both can always be refined — but institutional clarity. It does not have a national immigration enforcement corps, clearly mandated, clearly branded, clearly accountable, and clearly resourced for the scale of the task. Instead, it has a series of teams, departments, and enforcement strands, each making valuable contributions but none designed to act as a comprehensive, unified operational service.
The argument for creating such a body is not ideological. It is not rooted in rhetoric or political positioning. It flows from the simple reality that rules are only as effective as the institutions created to enforce them. If the United Kingdom is to maintain an immigration system that is fair, efficient, and credible — one that supports legal migration, protects those with genuine protection needs, and removes those with no lawful right to remain — it must consider whether the current fragmented structure is capable of delivering the consistency and authority such a system requires.
A structural gap at the heart of the system
The British public is often unaware of how complex the current enforcement landscape is. Border Force officers deal with passport checks, customs enforcement, anti-smuggling operations, and maritime activity. Immigration Enforcement teams conduct workplace raids, carry out arrests, and manage removals, but they are only one component in a chain that stretches across numerous Home Office directorates. The National Crime Agency investigates organised immigration crime, but its remit is far broader. Local police interact with immigration offenders only where criminality intersects their duties. Courts handle appeals and legal challenges. Local authorities become involved when safeguarding concerns arise.
At every point in this system, professionalism is visible. What is missing is cohesion. No one agency owns the process from identification to removal. No single organisation has the mandate to track overstayers, handle intelligence, liaise with embassies, coordinate detention availability, manage casework flow, and ultimately escort individuals out of the country. Instead, responsibilities are dispersed. When dispersal works, it works because dedicated individuals make it work. But dispersal creates structural weaknesses: slow case resolution, regional inconsistencies, unclear accountability, and an enforcement footprint that fluctuates according to local capacity rather than national strategy.
A national immigration enforcement service — a British equivalent to ICE, though firmly rooted in UK legal standards and governance traditions — would solve this structural fragmentation. Its purpose would be straightforward: to locate and remove individuals who have no legal right to remain in the UK, in accordance with the law and with due regard for human dignity.
What such a service would actually do
A British ICE style agency would integrate intelligence, enforcement, detention coordination, and removals under one roof. It would handle the full spectrum of interior immigration enforcement: tracking overstayers, identifying illegal working, processing foreign national offenders at the end of sentences, conducting enforcement operations where needed, coordinating with courts, and ensuring that removal decisions are carried out promptly and lawfully.
It would also create a clear identity for the individuals who carry out this work — something that is sorely lacking at present. Officers working in immigration enforcement perform roles involving considerable risk and sensitivity, yet they do so without the professional infrastructure that national policing or defence organisations provide. A dedicated agency would enable clearer training standards, better equipment, structured career progression, and a stronger ethos of service rooted in legality, fairness, and operational discipline.
Such an institution would also improve accountability. Rather than dispersing responsibility across multiple bodies, a single enforcement service would report directly to ministers, publish statistics, undergo regular inspection, and operate under a transparent code of conduct. In many respects, oversight would be strengthened, not weakened, because the lines of responsibility would be clearer.
The economic rationale: upfront cost, long-term savings
The financial case for a national enforcement service is not simply about reducing numbers. It is about improving the efficiency of a system that currently incurs extremely high long term costs because it struggles to resolve cases in a timely manner. Every month that a failed asylum claimant or long term overstayer remains in the system incurs accommodation, support, legal, and administrative costs. The UK currently spends significant sums housing individuals in temporary accommodation. Case delays — often caused by backlogs in removal logistics, casework bottlenecks, or insufficient enforcement capacity — accumulate into substantial public expenditure.
A dedicated enforcement service would not eliminate these costs entirely, but it would process cases faster, create firmer timelines, reduce reliance on expensive temporary accommodation, and shorten the period during which individuals remain in limbo. Savings may not be immediate, but over time they would be considerable.
The deterrent effect, though often misunderstood, also generates economic benefit. The purpose of deterrence is not to create hostility or fear. The purpose is to create certainty. When individuals know that overstaying will be detected and that removal will follow predictably, fewer attempt to exploit loopholes or violate visa conditions. Certainty, not severity, is the foundation of deterrence — and certainty requires capacity. A national enforcement service provides that capacity.
Recruitment: the lifeblood of an effective institution
One of the most significant challenges will be recruitment. Britain faces labour shortages in policing, prisons, logistics, and healthcare. Any new enforcement agency would have to compete for talent. Yet the recruitment pool is larger and more suitable than it first appears.
Armed Forces veterans represent an ideal fit. Their discipline, reliability, and experience of structured environments align naturally with enforcement work. Many seek post service careers in public protection and would welcome structured pathways into such a service.
Police officers — both serving and former — bring experience in evidence handling, arrest procedures, and managing high-pressure environments. Border Force and Home Office personnel already possess domain knowledge and operational insight. Graduates in law, criminology, and languages offer essential skills for casework, intelligence, and international liaison.
The key to recruitment will be professional pride. A national enforcement service must be an organisation that individuals want to join — one that offers training, stability, progression, and the dignity of serving the public in an important legal capacity. Building that identity is as important as building the physical infrastructure, because enforcement is only as strong as the officers who carry it out.
Governance: ensuring fairness and accountability
Any proposal for a new enforcement body must pass a fundamental test: does it uphold Britain’s legal and constitutional standards? That is not an afterthought. It is central to the institution’s legitimacy.
A national enforcement service would require a clear statutory framework defining its powers, its obligations, and its limits. It would require transparent reporting, independent inspection, and strong parliamentary oversight. Complaints mechanisms would need to be robust and independent. Training would have to include human rights compliance, safeguarding, and detailed understanding of immigration law.
Critics often fear that a national enforcement agency risks becoming unrestrained or politically weaponised. In reality, the opposite is true. Clear mandates and transparent oversight protect officers from political pressure and protect the public from arbitrary enforcement. Where roles are fragmented, accountability becomes diffuse. Where roles are unified and scrutinised, accountability becomes sharper.
International cooperation: a critical component of success
Immigration enforcement does not end at Britain’s borders. It depends on cooperation with foreign governments, embassies, airlines, and international policing bodies. A national enforcement service would centralise the liaison work required to obtain travel documents, secure return agreements, and manage removals in partnership with other countries. This is labour intensive, diplomatic, and often slow work. But it is easier for an agency with a clear identity and centralised authority to conduct.
The UK has one of the world’s most extensive diplomatic networks. A national enforcement service could leverage that network more effectively if it operated with unified structure and purpose. Many of the delays in the current system stem not from unwillingness to remove individuals but from complex international logistics. A dedicated service could streamline these processes, reduce bottlenecks, and implement more consistent timelines.
A fair system demands fair enforcement
Some argue that enforcement is inherently harsh. But the opposite is true. Fairness in immigration policy rests on two principles: protection for those who genuinely need it, and consequences for those who do not follow the rules. Without enforcement, the asylum system becomes less credible, public confidence erodes, and support for legal migration weakens. The vast majority of migrants who comply with visa requirements — students, workers, family members — have a right to expect that the rules they follow are applied equally to everyone.
A national enforcement service helps protect those who are vulnerable. Many victims of trafficking, exploitation, or modern slavery live in fear because they believe that approaching authorities will lead to deportation or punishment. A well-trained, professional enforcement agency can identify victims, differentiate them from offenders, and channel them into safeguarding pathways. An under resourced system cannot.
A matter of national credibility
Britain’s reputation as a fair and predictable nation depends on its ability to administer clear rules. Immigration rules, in particular, must be applied consistently. When they are not, international confidence erodes, domestic tension rises, and the entire system becomes less stable.
The creation of a National Immigration Enforcement Service would send a simple message: the UK is a rules based nation, committed to fairness, committed to order, committed to compassion where warranted, and committed to clarity at all times.
It is not a radical idea. It is a necessary modernisation. It aligns the UK with international practice, strengthens existing institutions, supports frontline officers, reinforces the rule of law, and protects both public finances and public confidence.
No single reform will solve every challenge in the immigration system. But a national enforcement service provides the one thing the current system lacks: a dedicated institution to ensure that the rules Parliament creates are the rules the country actually enforces.
Britain’s immigration debate has been animated for years. It may continue to be. But at some point, rhetoric must give way to structure and structure must give way to strategy. A national enforcement service is not a shift in values. It is an investment in them.
It would make Britain’s immigration system stronger, fairer, faster, and more credible. And in doing so, it would uphold one of the most important foundations of the United Kingdom’s constitutional character: that the rule of law is not merely written, but acted upon.
