Last week, as temperatures plummeted well below zero and snow covered much of the U.K., homeless charities were among the organisations to send out advisories on how to help those living on the streets. One of the suggestions was contacting StreetLink, a charity initiative that offered an outreach support service. Not all were convinced that this was the right approach.

“This seems like a good initiative but it is also recruiting the public to pass logistical support and identifying data about vulnerable people,” warned Dr. Sarah Keenan, a lecturer in law at Birkbeck University in London. She pointed to an investigation by The Guardian that found that St. Mungo’s, one of the charities involved in the StreetLink project, had worked with Home Office officials to identify illegal immigrants, some of whom would be arrested and deported from the country.

Last year, Corporate Watch, a campaign group, warned that homelessness charities, alongside local councils and London’s Mayor, were aiding the Immigration Compliance and Enforcement teams of the Home Office by conducting “joint visits” that lead to 133 rough sleepers being detained and 127 people deported in the area of Westminster alone. While the charities insisted that cooperation and information-sharing was done only with the consent of the rough sleepers involved, the revelations provoked consternation among many.

Charities are far from the only bodies to have been drawn into efforts by Britain’s Home Office to identify, detain and deport those deemed to have been illegally in the U.K. (British law enabled the government to deport EU citizens found sleeping rough, though a High Court ruling in December required the government to put an end to the initiative). In 2017, the Home Office signed an agreement with the NHS that enabled the government to access confidential patient information for immigration purposes, while landlords are required to check an individual’s immigration status before letting property to them. From this January, banks have been required to check the immigration status of account holders, and potentially freeze assets of those deemed to be in the country illegally. Charities have warned that the action could lead to accounts wrongly being frozen.

No protections

Charities have warned that collectively, such actions contribute to an increasingly “hostile environment” for migrants. Another charity, Detention Action, warned last year that victims of human trafficking were being denied protections that are in place to address the issue, and were being treated as irregular migrants and subject to regular procedures for detention and deportation. The House of Commons select committee on health wrote to the head of NHS Digital calling on it to immediately withdraw from the agreement with the Home Office, while a public interest test was conducted. One doctor told the committee in the evidence session she had seen pregnant women who were too frightened to access health care because of the immigration status. “As a doctor, I would say — and medical colleagues here will know — that confidentiality is the cornerstone of the doctor-patient relationship,” said Dr. Lucinda Hiam.

Migrants’ Rights Network, a campaign group, which believes that the arrangements put vulnerable migrants at risk, launched a legal challenge to the NHS arrangement last year, and has been granted permission for a judicial review of the arrangement, on the basis that it breached privacy and data protections, and led to widespread discrimination.