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Immigration advice staff and solicitors are ‘fearful’ about going to work amid ‘one of the worst’ periods of violent disorder of the last decade.
Police forces across Britain are gearing up for a potentially busy night of further rioting on Wednesday.
Concern for the safety of immigration law specialists in particular has been sparked after a list of solicitors’ firms and advice agencies across the country were shared in chat groups as targets.
Staff at some of those businesses said they have been advised to work from home on Wednesday, and that police and fire officers had visited their premises to check security arrangements including CCTV cameras and smoke alarms.
An office manager at an immigration advisory service said he felt ‘very very scared and very upset’ regarding the threats his workplace has received.
The man, who wished to remain anonymous, said: ‘Around this area, all of the shops that are next to us – they’re very scared as well.
‘Offices and restaurants – they’re very scared and upset.’
Another solicitor, whose family firm practises immigration law, said they will be working from home for the foreseeable future as a result of threats made to their business, but are worried about the potential impact this could have on their clients.
He said: ‘For us, we’re mostly concerned about our clients because our clients come from war-torn countries – if we’re not in the office, we can’t provide enough service they need.
‘There’s only so much we can do from home – most of our clients are quite vulnerable.
‘If there is any violence or destruction, all the businesses in the area are family-run businesses – so if they target us, everyone gets affected.’
A staff member at an immigration services provider said they have been entering and leaving the office at the same time as their colleague so that neither of them are alone in the building, but will be working from home on Wednesday.
Speaking about the threats she has seen made to her workplace online, she said: ‘You don’t really know what can happen – you get a bit paranoid then like anytime someone comes or someone buzzes like “oh my god, is something going to happen?”‘
When asked how she felt about returning to the office eventually, she said: ‘At the moment, we’re still in this kind of apprehensive, kind of fearful situation where you’re not really sure what to do.’
Companies also said that they have removed their addresses from their website as a precaution against potential targeted violence.
An immigration solicitor, whose workplace was among those circulated online as a target, said despite removing one of the office addresses from their website, staff at other locations remained concerned.
He said: ‘Our staff are scared in other addresses as well because all our addresses are on our website, we can’t just take the full address out because clients are travelling to us – and of course, it’s affecting us financially, emotionally.’
Mark Goldring, director of Asylum Welcome in Oxford – an organisation that provides advice and support to asylum seekers and refugees, is ‘very concerned’ about recent events and threats made to the charity.
He said: ‘Obviously we were very concerned but we were even more concerned about the events of last week and the weekend, both in Southport but also in asylum hotels and cities across England – so alarm levels were rising among our clients, volunteers and staff even before we knew of the specific targeting we learned of yesterday.’
Mr Goldring, who has run the charity for five years, said that although the organisation has seen threats to individual clients, it has not experienced ‘anything like this’ before.
He said that currently, the charity hopes to continue with its planned events later this week, providing violence does not escalate in the area, but that staff and volunteers have been told they should cancel activities or ‘step down’ if they feel threatened or uncomfortable in any way.
Mr Goldring said: ‘Our bigger concern is that what we’ve seen this week is smaller numbers of clients actually coming to events and activities, and we don’t think this is because of specific threats – this is because of the broader fear in the environment and watching the news coverage across the country.
‘Yesterday we had a football evening for young people, mostly young men and attendance fell off from 25 to half a dozen and we had a drop-in surgery, which happened yesterday – numbers were lowest that we’ve seen all year.
‘So I think there’s a climate of concern of “I don’t want to go somewhere obvious or public if I don’t need to for the time being”.
‘Obviously we will close well ahead of the possible protest tomorrow, many of our staff have refugee backgrounds themselves and so this will be shocking, traumatising, worrying for some.’
Several of the businesses listed as targets for anti-immigration protests said they have received an outpouring of support from local residents, businesses and members of the public across the country.
