Home Office Embeds AI in Immigration Checks, New Report Finds

The Home Office has integrated artificial intelligence into its daily operations with minimal public oversight, according to a new report from the Open Rights Group. The organization argues that these digital tools have strengthened the hostile environment for immigrants without adequate checks on their accuracy or fairness.

The report, titled Automated Discrimination: Unpacking the Digital Hostile Environment, details specific applications of the technology. AI is currently used to detect potential sham marriages, assess the ages of asylum seekers, and scan the contents of phones belonging to new arrivals. It also powers border surveillance through live facial recognition, drones, and satellites. Other functions include summarizing asylum interviews and generating country policy information used as evidence in those hearings.

A central point of contention involves a tool called Identify and Prioritise Immigration Cases, or Ipic. The report describes this system as opaque, noting that it helps prioritize and assess cases without clear public explanations of how it works. The authors contend that AI is neither neutral nor accurate, often reproducing societal biases. They argue that officials have kept the rollout in near-total secrecy, frequently citing national security to block freedom of information requests and redact disclosed documents.

The findings are based on a mix of limited material published by the Home Office, freedom of information requests, and questions posed by members of parliament. The report has cross-party support from Labour’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Scottish National Party’s Pete Wishart, and the Green Party’s Siân Berry. Ribeiro-Addy noted that the Home Office has been reluctant to explain how it ensures accountability when tools fail. She stated that the department has not justified why "some of the most vulnerable people, with the least power, should bear the greatest risks."

Sara Alsherif, a programme manager at the Open Rights Group, emphasized that migration is a human phenomenon rather than a technical problem. She called for urgent transparency and strict regulation to limit the use of AI. The group wants the government to ban undemocratic uses, such as relying on ChatGPT tools in asylum applications, and to create a public register of government AI tools.

The Home Office maintains that AI is one of several tools used to protect borders and does not replace human decision-makers. A spokesperson said that asylum decisions are made by trained caseworkers, while AI helps navigate interview records and policy information. The department stated that the tools are monitored through quality-assurance processes and cannot be used in isolation. It has committed to publishing updated evaluations of the rollout.

The report warns against reducing complex human cases to data points, a practice it links to policies first envisaged by Theresa May in 2012. It describes the reliance on AI to determine who stays and who is sent back as a deeply alarming move. The authors argue that successive governments have treated immigration as a technical issue to be fixed by code, rather than a series of individual human experiences.