Robina Qureshi, Director of refugee and migrant homelessness charity Positive Action in Housing based in Glasgow said:
“The unsuccessful dawn raid instructed by the U.K. Home Office today happened on the holy day of Eid (like Christmas) in a large Muslim community. Is nothing sacred?
“It cost tens of thousands of pounds for the police operation when the community resisted this barbaric action, never mind the Covid risks which is on the rise in the Southside of Glasgow.
“Scotland stopped dawn raids in 16 years ago and our charity led those campaigns when the (devolved) Scottish police and Scottish government condemned it outright and prepared a protocol and refused to devote resources to facilitating dawn raids or cooperate with Westminster in doing so.
“Be under no illusion that without that cooperation these dawn raids would disappear tomorrow and the Home Secretary would have no chance of reintroducing them here as part of her barbaric “new plan of immigration” which will see refugees left on the streets as soon as they reach our shores, and human rights abuses hidden away from public gaze within asylum reception centres and the prospect of ever more drownings because of a lack of safe and legal routes.
“Dawn raids are a joint operation between Scotland and Westminster and we are calling for an end to that cooperation to make dawn raids unviable.