No let up in UKBA spot checks
UKBA spot-checks of people's immigration status will continue at London Tube stations, the immigration minister has confirmed.
Campaigners hoped the initiative, which caused uproar when it started targeting mixed areas of London in the summer, would go the same way as the 'go home' vans and be quietly shelved by the Home Office.
But immigration minister Mark Harper told the BBC's World at One the operations had been a success and would continue.
"Yes, there will be more of them," he said.
"We base these operations on intelligence, so where we have cause to think we are going to be successful in targeting people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom, not based on racial profiling, they're based on intelligence and on the behaviour of individuals.
"We will continue to use them because they're effective in targeting people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom and who we should be removing."
Harper insisted one in three of illegal immigrants halted this summer had been deported
There were 29 stops at Kensal green Tube station, with three arrests. There were 48 stops at Walthamstow, leading to 14 arrests.
Transport police in Stratford made a further arrest.
Of those 18 arrests, six were deported, ten are going through the deportation process, and two claimed asylum
"Would I like to arrest more people as a proportion of those we encounter? Yes I would," Harper said.
The spot checks caused outrage from migrant rights groups and led to accusations of racial profiling, amid reports officers were stopping only non-white people.
They were also condemned by Ukip leader Nigel Farage, who said: "Spot checks and being demanded to show your papers by officialdom are not the British way of doing things."
