New report: AI being embedded across immigration system in ‘near total secrecy’
- Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy says report is an opportunity “to break with the Home Office’s toxic record of failure”.
- New report exposes ‘near total secrecy’ of how AI being used across the immigration system
- Cross party MPs criticises lack of transparency and accountability over use of AI.
A new report by Open Rights Group (ORG) outlines how artificial intelligence (AI) has been embedded across the UK’s immigration system and at the nation’s borders. Automated discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment exposes the ‘near total secrecy’ of how AI is being used with government officials routinely invoke ‘national security’ to stonewall FOI requests and redact disclosures so that they are meaningless.
The report highlights how AI is shaped by and will shape the hostile environment, reinforcing bias and discrimination.
The report also criticises successive governments for pushing a techno-solutionist ideology that reduces the complex human phenomenon of migration to a technical problem that can be fixed. Under the current administration, the solution appears to be total cybernetic control1 of any migrant deemed to be a threat. This has resulted in a shift from reactive to proactive immigration enforcement, underpinned by predictive analytics and data-driven algorithmic risk assessments, as in the major but still obscure ‘Cerberus’ project, which promises to defend the UK from unknown threats.
Automated Discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment
Read nowPolitical criticism of the unregulated use of AI in immigration
Cross party MPs have contributed forewords to the report that criticise the Home Office’s lack of transparency and accountability.
Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy stated:
“In spite of questions and requests, the Home Office has been reluctant to publish the documents that would explain how AI is used in asylum processing, what the problems are and how they are being addressed. That is a source of real frustration. It is also hard to understand if the Home Office genuinely believes its policies are effective and justifiable.”
She added:
“The Home Office has not explained how it will ensure there is accountability when they fail or justified why some of the most vulnerable people, with the least power, should bear the greatest risks.
Her comments were echoed by SNP MP Pete Wishart who criticised the Home Office’s failure to inform asylum applicants when AI is used in their cases:
“There is also an important question of accountability. If an asylum seeker believes that an AI system has made a mistake, they need to be able to know that the technology was used and have the chance to challenge its output.”
He also challenged the government’s focus on using automation to ‘speed-up’ processes, saying:
“We should be careful not to assume that making the system faster necessarily makes it better. The asylum system needs to make good decisions as well as timely ones. A quicker wrong decision is not an improvement.”
“Migration is a human phenomenon and experience not a technical problem that can be fixed by artificial intelligence.
The public is rightly wary of how AI is will change our society, which makes government secrecy about its use across the immigration sector even more concerning.
We urgently need transparency, accountability and strict regulation to restrict how AI is used and to prevent its wider rollout.”
Sara Alsherif
ORG Migrant Digital Justice Programme Manager
Key findings of the report
The report documents a rapidly expanding catalogue of deployments of AI in the immigration system and in the surveillance of the UK’s borders. Currently, AI is being used to:
- Surveil borders through live facial recognition, AI-powered drones and satellites and foreign-built autonomous surveillance towers.
- Pre-empt unknown threats, through obscure programmes such as Cerberus, marking a decisive shift from reactive to ‘predictive’, proactive enforcement.
- Estimate the age of people seeking asylum.
- Summarise asylum interviews and country policy information used in the processing of asylum cases.
- Prioritise and assess cases through the opaque Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases (IPIC) tool.
- Sift through irregular entrants’ mobile phones.
- Automatically flag potential “sham” marriages with a red or green light.
ORG’s key concerns are:
- AI is not neutral or accurate. It can replicate bias and discrimination within society, particularly when a key driver for its use are anti-immigration policies and rhetoric.
- AI is being trialled and tested in near-total secrecy. Officials routinely invoke ‘national security’ to stonewall FOI requests and redact disclosures. In at least one instance, the authorities have pressured a researcher to withdraw published findings.
- The expansion of the AI in immigration is contributing to the UK’s dependence on foreign tech companies. Most of the technology being used within immigration is supplied by US, Israeli, and other foreign defence and security giants. This leaves the UK dependent and locked-in to using foreign companies, despite the Government’s supposed ambition to be an “AI maker”, not an “AI taker”.
- There is no regulation. Despite promises in their election manifesto, the Labour Government has failed to regulate AI.
“These systems do not just amplify existing social biases in the data, but produce hostility as both an intended and unintended consequence.
Making these systems legible is an increasingly difficult endeavour, as opacity and secrecy pervade their use across private and public actors.”
Claudia Aradau
Professor of International Politics, King’s College London
“The way in which the UK is rushing towards the adoption of artificial intelligence in the immigration system is a textbook example of technological solutionism. Driven by a securitised, repressive approach to migration, the UK’s embrace of AI can only reinforce the illusion that immigration is a technological bug at the heart of British society — one that only technologies of discrimination and control can fix.
Rather than offering durable policy options to help humanely manage this intrinsically human phenomenon, administrations from both sides of the ideological spectrum have caved to the unchecked promise of AI, which has only translated into the automation of the Hostile Environment. This report shows that we should not assume that AI works for migrants and the immigration system. On the contrary, we should demand evidence that it does before democratically assessing whether it makes sense to implement it at all.”
Fabio Chiusi
Author of the report
Recommendations
Open Rights Group is calling for the Government to:
- End the techno-solutionist belief that AI can fix the complex human phenomenon of migration.
- Regulate AI and ban uses that are undemocratic and risk human rights violations – such as the use of ChatGPT tools in asylum application.
- Be more transparent with stronger FOI laws, a narrower definition of national security and a robust public register of government AI tools;
- Ensure the UK has digital sovereignty over tools being used by the state, and an end to outsized corporate influence; and
- Challenge prejudicial, ideologically driven anti-immigration politics. Only then can AI become a tool of humanitarian assistance rather than one of blind, automated discrimination.
Find out more in our report
Read nowAutomated discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment uses desk and literature research, expert interviews, and analysis of Home Office documents obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests. The report was commissioned by Open Rights Group and authored by Fabio Chiusi, a journalist, researcher, writer, and adjunct professor whose work focuses on the intersection of digital technology, artificial intelligence, and society.
1 For an investigation into the role of cybernetics in the conceptualisation and realisation of border surveillance assemblages, cfr. Iván Chaar-Lòpez (2024), ‘The Cybernetic Border. Drones, Technology and Intrusion’, Duke University Press, Sources: Chaar López, I. (2024) The cybernetic border: Drones, technology, and intrusion. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
