Working With Delivery Platforms to Harass Migrants

In Britain, hotels hosting refugees have become a target of anti-immigration rallies. Keir Starmer’s government is pandering to the protests — announcing a partnership with delivery app firms to identify asylum seekers working as riders.

Deliveroo Takeaway Delivery Courier In London

A Deliveroo courier delivering food in London on June 1, 2025. (Mike Kemp / In Pictures via Getty Images)


Almost exactly a year since the riots that saw lynch mobs attempting to set fire to hotels accommodating migrants and refugees, the British government has decided to set loose another lawless mob onto blameless asylum seekers: food-delivery platforms.

The government announced that the accommodation data of asylum seekers will be shared with Deliveroo, Uber Eats, and Just Eat, supposedly so that these companies can detect “patterns of misuse” on their platforms. The BBC reports that they will use the hotel data to identify “an account spending a lot of time near one of the hotels” — that is, to try and catch asylum seekers working in food delivery without authorization.

Officially, this is an attempt to clean up the labor market in the food delivery sector. Unofficially, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is throwing red meat to the racists who appear to be geared-up for another summer of anti-migrant violence. Just a day before the asylum hotel data-sharing initiative was announced, more than a thousand people protested outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Essex, to the northeast of London, with two people arrested for violent disorder.

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