The UK Home Office [has just proceeded with a deportation flight to Jamaica](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51456387). On the flight are “foreign national offenders” convicted of serious crimes. On the flight are also people who have been in the UK from an early age (2 or 3), and people who were convicted of one-time drug-dealing offences, for example. The courts have stopped the removal of a few people who had been denied access to legal support. Naturally, the Home Office and Conservative politicians foreground the “foreign” aspect and the presence of “serious criminals” to perform being tough to the public and their base whilst refusing to discuss the “individual cases” that don’t fit with their propaganda. Labour politicians and others have demanded to know why the flight went ahead when we are still awaiting the results of an inquiry into the Windrush scandal (which included unjust deportations) and in defiance of recommendations that people who came to the UK as small children should not be deported to places where they know no-one. Defending the government’s conduct in the House of Commons, the new immigration minister, Kevin Foster made a comparison between black immigrants (such as midwives) who make a contribution and criminals, thereby suggesting a standard of deservingness that communities of immigrant origin have to meet. And with some justice, the Tories can say that this deportation regime has its basis in laws passed by New Labour in 2007, a point highlighted in [Maya Goodfellow’s excellent book, Hostile Environment](https://www.versobooks.com/books/3064-hostile-environment).
The case raises many issues, but I’d like to foreground three. The first is the willingness of the government to stigmatize as “foreign criminals” people who are anything but foreign, who have been socialized as British, who have nothing and nobody in the country of the nominal nationality. This is because British nationality law puts registration as British beyond the financial grasp of many low-income families or imposes a “bad character” test on children as young as 10 to prevent them from registering. The second is that this shows that the Windrush “moment” is over. Despite having cried some crocodile tears over a scandal that saw some people deported and others lose their homes, jobs and be denied medical care, the government has done nothing to prevent such things from happening in the future and most of the victims have not even been compensated. In fact, the British government remains determined to make it as hard as possible for people at the sharp end of its immigration and nationality regimes to assert and defend their rights, leaving them at the mercy of government officials. The third is that this may be electorally popular, which raises questions for the left: how do we fight injustice in a democracy when deliberate cruelty and injustice come with political benefits?