Every so often, a new story lands with such force that it knocks the breath out of you. Over the past week, several reports from the United States have done exactly that. The American immigration enforcement system, ICE, is so dehumanising, and so casually violent that it becomes impossible to imagine why anyone would suggest the UK should emulate it.

Yet as Britain debates its own approach to immigration, where according to news outlets, Reform and Conservative parties are beginning to pledge a similar model (Bloch, 2025), the American system is being floated as a potential blueprint. It should not be. The American model stands as a warning, not an example.

It is embarrassing, frankly, that this is even a point of negotiation in a country that prides itself on fairness and justice. One of the most devastating accounts I came across this morning reported that an intensive care nurse, Alex Pretti, was shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis. A healthcare worker, someone whose job is literally to preserve life, killed during an enforcement operation.

Another report described a mother being deported and separated from her child while breastfeeding. The image alone is almost unbearable, a moment of profound intimacy and vulnerability shattered by state intervention. Cases like these are not “accidents.” They are not unfortunate one offs.

They are the predictable outcomes of a system that has allowed harm to become routine. Investigations by multiple news outlets have documented that Americans are being wrongfully detained due to database errors, mistaken identities, and racial profiling. This is disgusting.

When citizens can be swept into detention because an algorithm misfires or an officer makes an assumption, the issue is no longer immigration. It becomes a question of civil liberties, of state power, and of how easily rights can be eroded when fear becomes policy. Entire communities now live in fear of raids that can, as we have seen, happen anywhere.

The American experience shows us exactly what happens when enforcement eclipses humanity

Workplaces, homes, hospitals, even outside schools. So, the question becomes unavoidable. Why is harm so normalised today?

The United States has become so militarised, so insulated from oversight, and so driven by political theatre that cruelty is no longer an aberration. It is embedded. It is operational.

And it is defended. This is not a model the UK should aspire to. It is heartless and cruel, and the public deserves a serious, evidence-based conversation about how to address immigration, not a rushed import of tactics that have already failed elsewhere.

Importing these approaches would simply replicate the failures of a country still struggling to reckon with the consequences of its own policies. We cannot build a system on fear. It will not produce safety, and it never will.

The American experience shows us exactly what happens when enforcement eclipses humanity. We should not have to learn that lesson the hard way.