It strains to be seen as competent and tough, yet struggles to show evidence that its policies are working. It is the department of law and order, yet it is constantly found to have broken the law. Something seems badly wrong at the heart of one of Britain’s most important ministries.
What’s going on at the Home Office has become an increasingly urgent question in recent years. “He said: ‘Listen mate, I don’t know what’s going on at the Home Office, but your name is flagged on our system.’” The officer agreed that Amin’s English sounded fine. “I asked one officer ‘Could you please tell me: do you think I can’t speak English?’” Amin told me recently. Why would anyone think he had cheated on a test he had taken as a mere formality when he applied for a new visa? He had lived in the UK for nearly a decade, he had a degree from an English university, he spoke English fluently. Amin was terrified and humiliated – he had needed the toilet before he was led out of his house, and had to go while a female officer looked on – but he was also baffled. Enforcement officers told him that he was accused of cheating on an English language test. Amin had just been arrested in a dawn raid on his east London home. For Sheikh Shariful Amin, a young businessman from Bangladesh, the moment of disbelief came on 5 February 2015, in the back of an Immigration Enforcement van.
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