The immigration unit inside the Living Room cafe

IMMIGRATION enforcement officers raided a café in Camden Town last week in a move that onlookers described as “overzealous” and “intimidating”.

Around 10 men – all wearing stab vests, and with batons and handcuffs – barrelled into the Living Room cafe in Camden Road last Thursday afternoon, saying that they had received a tip-off about illegal immigration activity. The officers searched the building’s basement and upstairs before “standing down”. They did not take anyone away with them.

Amanda Aires, who works in Living Room, told the New Journal after the incident: “It was scary – there were so many of them and only three of us. They pulled us aside to ask questions. I was shaking, even though I was telling myself I have nothing to worry about because all my papers are in order.”

The immigration officers told the New Journal they did not need a warrant to raid Living Room because they were operating under section 179 of the Licensing Act 2003, which gives immigration staff the right to enter a premises.

Camden resident Seun Twins, who was in the café at the time of the raid, said the officers’ presence was “overzealous”. “It was intimidating towards the public,” she said, adding: “The information they gave, they didn’t give it freely – members of the public had to intervene to ask them questions.

“The majority of workers here are young women, and then [more than 10] men have just come in with uniforms for no reason. When we confronted them, they became a bit defensive and aggressive as well. This is the problem with the internal immigration in this country – they want to try and use narratives that we’ve seen in the media to try and justify something that was objectively abhorrent.”

Tara Copeland, who lives in Queen’s Crescent and is part of a network that campaigns against immigration raids, told the *New Journal*: “When immigration officers come down, they’re banking on people not understanding the process, not understan­ding what their rights are.

“It’s such a shocking experience because you’re caught off-guard, and they’re relying on that. It’s like they’re trying to catch you out. That’s one of the things I hate the most about it, it’s not a fair process. It sets immigrants up to fail. A lot of the time these are just people trying to live their lives.”

She added: “It feels very brazen, the way [enforcement officers] behave a lot of the time. I do think it really signifies the changes that are happening in the country – obviously there has been such a big push from successive governments to tackle immigration, and illegal immigration in particular.”

Ms Copeland told how there has been a recent uptick in alerts about raids across Camden, including in Kilburn and Kentish Town. “Camden calls itself a borough of sanctuary, but what does that mean? This isn’t welcoming, it’s horrible,” she said.

The Home Office was invited to comment.