Photos: Stefano Ferrarin

Beyond the pad thai being delivered to your door is a gig economy built on precarious labour and a largely migrant workforce. Now, they face a new wave of pressure: a sharp rise in immigration raids as part of a Labour-led nationwide crackdown on so-called ‘illegal working’.

Freedom of Information data obtained by the Cable reveals the number of raids in Bristol has more than tripled in the past five years. Home Office statistics show Wales and the West of England had the most ‘illegal working’ arrests outside London between July 2024 and January 2025.

Delivery riders — already underpaid and over-policed — are the main targets. Working for apps like Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats, riders have been pulled over by police for suspected traffic offenses and then handed over to immigration officers.

As the crackdown intensifies, the Cable went to depots and shopping centres across Bristol to investigate how the raids and the government’s immigration policies are affecting people on the ground, and to meet those pushing back.

‘It’s horrible. It makes them nervous’

We approach a Deliveroo Hop depot, tucked behind a retail park in east Bristol, where a small group of riders are on a break, leaning on their mopeds, swiping through their phones, or chatting in the shade. 

They are understandably wary, given the site was raided by immigration officers in May.

Inside the depot, an employee tells us that raids are happening every two or three weeks. “They’ll park outside at random times. They’ve come in the evening, during the day. Then they’ll question the riders when they’re out there,” she says. 

“It’s horrible. It makes them nervous,” the employee says, anger in her voice. “This is supposed to be somewhere riders can have a drink, use the bathroom, and relax outside. They’re our colleagues, and they feel like they can’t come here.”

The drivers start sharing their stories. Many say they’re used to seeing constant stops as a routine part of the job. 

“[A rider] went into McDonald’s, and Immigration took him straight away,” a scooter rider outside a cafe in Broadmead tells us, explaining how a friend of his was apprehended and later detained. 

A driver in his 40s, whom we spoke to as he sat in his car outside the depot, seemed more relaxed, despite having been stopped by immigration just two weeks previously. “They came here asking about my ID, my [immigration] status, my driving license.” 

He seems unconcerned by the uptick in immigration operations. “If someone has no paperwork, it’s his fault, it’s not the immigration guy’s fault”, he says. “I think he’s doing his job.”

Other drivers disagree. “You don’t see English people doing deliveries. 99% are immigrants,” says a driver in his thirties walking across the depot forecourt. “If immigrants stop doing Deliveroo, who’s going to deliver the food for you?” 

‘A nationwide blitz’

In July 2025, the Home Office launched a “nationwide blitz” targeting delivery riders and others deemed to be working illegally in the gig economy. This came shortly after Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp posted a video on X claiming to have uncovered illegal working by asylum seekers housed in hotels.

Since then, the government said it would share hotel locations with delivery companies to prevent unauthorised work — including monitoring delivery accounts.

But the reality on the ground is more complex.

We spoke to Sandra*, a delivery rider from Ecuador who has been in Bristol for eight years and lives with her British partner and their daughter. “Everyone here has kids to feed,” she says. “I am here to help my family in Ecuador.”

The industry in which delivery riders operate is precarious by design, often attracting workers with few other options. Delivery riders are not employees. They are classed as ‘independent contractors’ who are paid by delivery, rather than receiving an hourly wage and do not receive standard employee benefits such as paid holiday or sick leave. 

As a result, they’re forced to put up with low incomes, with some riders reporting they make around £60 a day for a full day’s work – amounting to about £7.50 per hour, almost five pounds an hour less than the National Minimum Wage.

Low pay and poor conditions on the road were some of the primary complaints we heard from riders at the depot. “If you have just this job, you can’t run your home,” says a driver outside the depot, a father of three. He shows us his phone with two deliveries at other ends of the city, each offering £6. 

For several years, the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union representing Deliveroo riders in London launched a series of strikes against the company. They also brought a claim against Deliveroo, arguing that delivery riders should be reclassified as employees and therefore have the right to collectively bargain for better pay and conditions. 

However, the Supreme Court ruled against the union in November 2023, and the majority of delivery riders and drivers remain in an economically precarious position. 

Alongside the low pay and poor conditions come other risks too. 

“People kick you off your bike. I have had three scooters stolen”, says Sandra, who was once robbed at the depot where we met her. 

Reports of robberies are echoed by another rider in his late twenties we speak to in Broadmead, who told us he’d heard of four robberies that week, and had been robbed himself. 

“Last time he took my bike, [the assailant] said ‘give me the bike or I’ll cut your head,’” he tells us. 

‘We operate on the basis that no one is illegal’

For Dr Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol, the government’s targeting of delivery riders has a political function. “They always target easy wins. Very rarely do we see the targeting of chains,” she says. 

While government ire is directed at riders, the companies themselves receive little oversight. 

“It sows fear,” she adds. “For every person that you catch, hundreds more are made aware that they’re deportable and start getting scared. It has a psychological effect.” 

While immigration enforcement operations create good optics for the government, she argues, the precarity and exploitation that are increasingly baked into the UK gig economy are largely ignored. 

For some, the state’s targeting of delivery drivers requires a more proactive response. Bristol Anti-Raids group monitors immigration raids around the city, part of a national network of groups across the UK which have successfully blocked deportations in places such as Glasgow and south London, as well as Bristol.  

“We operate on the basis that no one is illegal. The very premise that someone is unlawful because of the way they’ve entered the country is fundamentally ridiculous,” says Kate*, a coordinator for the Bristol anti-raids group. “All of these people are contributing to our society, and we desperately need them.”

The group shares information about suspected immigration raids via an encrypted messaging app, encourages witnesses to intervene and carries out training in communities vulnerable to raids. 

“Often these raids are barely legal. We think there needs to be scrutiny of what’s going on” says Kate. She mentions police racially profiling riders, often pulling them over for suspected traffic offences before handing them over to immigration officers, which she argues is an abuse of police power. 

Kate got involved in the group after witnessing immigration raids taking place. “I live in neighbourhoods where people I know are being targeted by it, and I’ve seen how much distress it causes.” 

With immigration raids on the increase, for Kate, resisting them is part of a wider politics of community solidarity. “These raids are designed as part of the hostile environment to induce fear and to upset our neighbours. We want a community that stands together and looks out for each other.” 

Back at the depot, the Deliveroo Hop employee concurs. “You’re bothering people who are just doing a job — a job that they’re not getting paid enough for. It puts a bad taste in your mouth to see it happening.”