CAMPAIGNERS have raised alarm over “dangerous” moves to hand immigration enforcement teams the power to decide on trafficking claims.

New Home Office guidance, published last Monday, could lead to more trafficking victims being detained and deported or make them too scared to come forward for help, groups supporting survivors warned at the weekend.

The guidance seeks to introduce a new decision-making body, the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority, (IECA) to handle referrals to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), the framework for identifying victims of trafficking. 

This new body is  specifically intended to to decide on the cases of people facing deportation, operating alongside the existing Single Competent Authority, the team previously responsible for all modern slavery claim decisions. 

People whose claims will be decided by the IECA include those being held in detention centres and non-British nationals facing deportation after being convicted of a criminal offence. 

Earlier this year, fresh Home Office guidance made it more difficult for trafficking survivors to gain release from immigration detention. 

Freedom from Torture described the latest change as forming “part of a wholesale attack on the rights of victims of trafficking,” which also includes proposals in the Nationality and Borders Bill that the group said would make it harder to identify victims. 

“It is a dangerous move to give the immigration enforcement arm of the Home Office the power to decide if someone is a victim of trafficking,” said Freedom from Torture head of asylum advocacy Sile Reynolds. 

“With its clear agenda to detain and remove people from the UK … this will result in more people who have survived the horror of trafficking being detained and removed.”

More than 2,000 potential trafficking survivors have been detained since 2019, according to figures released earlier this year by the After Exploitation charity. 

Maya Esslemont, the charity’s director, also attacked the new guidance.

“NGOs already fear that Home Office involvement in the trafficking decision making process is off-putting for survivors willing to report a crime but fearful due to their immigration status,” she told the Morning Star today. 

“Blurring the lines between trafficking and immigration decision-making even further, without any collaboration with survivor groups and charities, does nothing to assuage fears that immigration enforcement will be prioritised over the welfare of victims.”

Being recognised as a victim of trafficking can help when appealing against criminal convictions and stopping removals, and it also allows a person to receive support from the state. 

In a statement, the Home Office said: “When a potential victim of modern slavery is referred into the National Referral Mechanism, it is important that they receive a decision as quickly as possible to provide certainty and secure the correct support to assist with their recovery.

“This operational change is about ensuring that those making decisions are able to access the information they need to make the right decisions without unnecessary delay.”