Home Office raid on Byron Burger Bar unleashes social media frenzy as 35 migrant workers deported

You may have read about the recent social media fury over claims that Byron, a UK burger chain with restaurants in London and Scotland, collaborated with the Home Office to have 35 of its staff deported back to countries including Brazil, Nepal, Egypt and Albania. Byrony Gordon, writing for The Telegraph gives an interesting slant on the backlash that followed, which became Byron’s worst media nightmare.

The Home Office announced that 35 people had been arrested for immigration offences at a number of restaurants across London, and added that the operation had been carried out with the "full co-operation" of Byron earlier this month.

The story continues that the business had carried out the correct "right to work" checks on staff, but had been shown false or counterfeit documentation and as they had been able to demonstrate this they did not incur civil penalty action, the Home Office said.

In other words, by “working with” the Home Office, the company was obeying the law by allowing (they would be compelled to do anyway) the Government access to workers who had used fake documentation to obtain jobs, which in effect deprives other people (immigrants included) of work in the UK.

The Telegraph reported that Unions claimed migrant workers were ‘lured to their fates’ under false pretences – a health and safety meeting – as if these staff hadn’t themselves behaved in a similarly underhand fashion. The Unite union complained that the ‘deportees wouldn’t get redundancy’. Byrony gasps: “imagine, defrauding your employers and then not getting a pay-off when they uncover your duplicity!”

What followed after the story broke is incredible. A protest hashtag was unleashed on Twitter: #BoycottByron. Then on Friday, thousands of cockroaches and locusts were released into two of the chain’s restaurants in London.

Virtuous people on social media announced they would not be spending £8 on a burger, to show ‘solidarity’ for the deported workers. A mass protest was arranged over the weekend at the company’s Holborn branch.   

Twitter was deluged with accusations that Byron was happy to “exploit” illegal workers before throwing them to the wolves when it looked like it might get found out.

But it could also be argued that the company was merely fulfilling its legal duty by checking its workers’ documents, which it later found to be bogus. The documents fooled Byron (it is still not that easy to fully verify documents), but were obviously uncovered by the Home Office enforcement team, which has the ultimate responsibility to verify immigration status and deport illegal immigrants and visa overstayers.

If you want to avoid Home Office raids and a painful fine, make sure you follow the correct immigration document checking procedures, which you can find on the Home Office website, audit files regularly and seek advice if you are unsure.

In the meantime, there are also reports that the Cedars detention centre is to b closed by the Home Office, now under the leadership of new Home Secretary Amber Rudd, following negative reports.

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