‘No Eid link’ to Glasgow raid

THE government last Friday (14) defended an immigration raid that inflamed tensions in Glasgow’s Muslim community at the start of Eid, insisting there was no connection to the festival.

Last Thursday’s (13) deportation raid targeted a property housing two illegal immigrants from India. A Home Office van was blockaded by hundreds of protesters, and the pair were eventually released on bail as Glasgow police intervened in a bid to defuse tensions.

“The operation was routine and in no way connected to Eid. We are tackling illegal immigration and the harms it causes,” prime minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said.

“We will continue to tackle illegal immigration,” he added.

The area in Scotland’s biggest city is home to a large Muslim community, and is part of the constituency of Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon.

“The Home Office needs to ask itself hard questions,” she said. “Doing this on Eid, in the heart of our Muslim community, and in the middle of a serious Covid outbreak, was staggeringly irresponsible – but the even deeper problem is an appalling asylum and immigration policy.”

The raid also caused trouble for Labour, after a prominent union official tweeted that home secretary Priti Patel, who is of Indian descent, should herself be “deported”.

Labour leaders suspended the Unite union’s Howard Beckett, who apologised for the tweet but said he stood by his criticism of the government’s “racist” policies.