The raids are over. But the fear remains. That is the message from Minnesota’s immigrant communities as the UK Home Office quietly reviews its intelligence-sharing partnership with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Sources close to the Home Secretary confirm a cross-departmental audit is underway. The review, triggered by leaked reports of family separations and aggressive enforcement tactics in the American Midwest, has put the Special Asylum Liaison Agreement (SALA) under fresh scrutiny. Whitehall insiders describe the mood as “cautious” but the direction is clear: No one wants to be seen as complicit.
The agreement, signed in 2019, allows UK Border Force to receive real-time data on asylum seekers who may have transited through the United States. It was sold as a tool against “gaming the system.” But critics now say it has turned British officials into an accessory to Trump-era hardline policies.
A Home Office spokesperson insisted the review is “routine” and “not a response to any specific incident.” But the timing is awkward. Just last week, leaked ICE field reports detailed operations in Minneapolis where families were separated and children held in secure facilities. The reports were shared with UK officials as part of the partnership.
“The British public would be horrified if they knew how this data was being used,” said a former Home Office analyst who worked on the programme. “We are effectively enabling the same playbook that caused havoc at the border. And for what? The numbers are tiny. It’s performative cruelty.”
The numbers support that claim. Since SALA began, fewer than 200 individuals have been identified as “of interest” to UK authorities. Only a handful have had their asylum claims impacted. Yet the political cost is mounting.
Labour’s shadow home secretary has already demanded a full parliamentary inquiry. The Liberal Democrats are tabling an urgent question. And a group of Tory backbenchers, uncomfortable with the optics, are whispering about a “quiet pause.”
The real fear, however, is not in Westminster. It is in the Somali and Hmong communities of St. Paul, where word of the data-sharing has spread. Families who fled war and persecution now worry that a routine traffic stop or a visit to a relative could trigger a chain reaction leading to deportation.
“We came here legally. We follow the rules. But now we feel watched,” said a community organiser who asked not to be identified. “The raids may have stopped, but the surveillance has not.”
The Home Office review is expected to conclude in two weeks. But the political fallout will last much longer. For a government that prides itself on humanitarian values, the optics of being handcuffed to ICE are poison. The game is shifting. And someone will have to blink.
