Timeline of immigration enforcement in the United Kingdom

This page provides a timeline of key events related to immigration enforcement in the United Kingdom. The focus is on enforcement activities such as those carried out by Immigration Enforcement, detention operations, and border patrol carried out by the Border Force. Changes to visa policy or nationality policy are not included, except insofar as they very directly tie in with enforcement.

Visual data

Wikipedia Views

The chart below shows pageviews of the English Wikipedia article Immigration Enforcement (a division of the Home Office responsible for enforcing immigration law in the United Kingdom) on desktop, mobile-web, desktop-spider, mobile-web-spider and mobile app, from July 2015 to January 2021.

Full timeline

Year	Month and date (if available)	Event type	Affected agencies (past, and present equivalents)	Details
1905	000000002024-08-11-0000August 11	Legislation	Executive branch, specifically home ministry	The Aliens Act 1905 is the first Act to introduce immigration controls and registration. The Home Secretary is given overall responsibility for immigration and nationality matters. While the Act is ostensibly designed to prevent paupers and criminals from migrating and to deport those who migrated, its unstated motivation seems to be to control Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe.
1914	000000002024-08-05-0000August 5	Legislation	Executive branch, specifically home ministry	The Aliens Restriction Act 1914 is passed in a single day on the eve of World War I. The Act requires every person entering the country to produce evidence of identity at the time of entry. The Act effectively supersedes the Aliens Act 1905 due to much more stringent provisions. The power still remains in use.
1920				The UK Immigration Service begins operation under the Home Office, under the name of Aliens Branch.
1925				By this time, an immigration officer is present at Croydon Airport, the UK's main airport (taken from Wikipedia page, no citation present).
1933				The Aliens Branch changes its name to the Immigration Branch. The most recent name prior to being disbanded is UK Immigration Service.
1973				The Immigration Branch changes its name to the UK Immigration Service.
1987				The Carriers' Liability Act is passed. The Act places liability on carriers for passengers they bring without proper documents.
1993				The Campsfield House deention centre is opened. This is to provide the Immigration Service with additional capacity of 200 to detail people, beyond the 180 or so places available at airports.
1993				The first Airline Liaison Officer (ALO) is posted in the Delhi airport, to prevent people from boarding if they have suspect documentation. ALO deployments would increase over the year, reaching 57 by 2001. The number of passengers prevented from boarding would reach 2095 in 1998 and 4999 in 1999.
1998	000000002024-07-27-0000July 27			Under the Labour government of 1997 to 2001, the document Fairer, Faster And Firmer - a modern approach to immigration and asylum is published by the Home Office. The paper promises an expansion of detention centres, and leads to a lot of detention centre construction.
2000	000000002024-02-06-0000February 6			A group of hijackers led by brothers Ali Safi and Mohammed Safi hijack a local flight in Afghanistan to fly to and land at Stansted Airport in Essex. 79 of the passengers claim asylum in the United Kingdom. This would lead to a court case that would lead to judicial rulings in 2006 stating that the hijackers' actions do not make them ineligible for asylum. Both parties condemn the rulings, and opposition blames them on the Labour Party's Human Rights Act 1998. See 2006 Afghan hijackers case for more.
2001	000000002024-02-01-0000February			The Immigration and Nationality Directorate's (IND) Casework Application Programme contract with Siemens Business Services is cancelled, after it is determined that Siemens would be unable to deliver what IND wants. The goal was to provide a strong information technology backbone for IND operations. The contract was signed in April 1996 for delivery in October 1998, but delivery had been repeatedly delayed prior to the cancellation of the contract.
2007	000000002024-04-01-0000April 1	Organizational restructuring	Border and Immigration Agency; current equivalents: Immigration Enforcement, Border Force, UK Visas and Immigration	The Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) is created through as an executive agency of the British Home Office. It replaces the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND), and its operational arm, the UK Immigration Service.
2008	000000002024-04-01-0000April 1	Organizational restructuring	UK Border Agency; current equivalents: Immigration Enforcement, Border Force, UK Visas and Immigration	The UK Border Agency is created as part of the Home Office, through a merger of the Border and Immigration Agency, UKvisas, and the detection function of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The agency would suffer a similar fate as the similar Immigration and Naturalization Service in the United States: it would be shut down and its functions handed over to more specific agencies.
2012	000000002024-03-01-0000March 1	Organizational restructuring	Border Force	The Border Force is spun off from the UK Border Agency. It controls air and sea ports of entry and also monitors the rest of the border. It is similar to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
2012	000000002024-04-01-0000April 1	Organizational restructuring	Immigration Enforcement	Immigration Enforcement is spun off from the UK Border Agency. It carries out visits in residential and business premises to identify people present without an authorised status, and initiate removal proceedings. It is similar to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
2013	000000002024-04-01-0000April 1	Organizational restructuring	UK Border Agency; current equivalents: Immigration Enforcement, Border Force, UK Visas and Immigration	The UK Border Agency is dissolved. Border Force and Immigration Enforcement already report directly to the Home Office; the visas function is spun off as UK Visas and Immigration (the UK equivalent of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services).