Everybody to Kenmure Street
Over the weekend, my husband and I saw a beautiful documentary, Everybody to Kenmure Street, at a screening hosted by East End Acts. The film tracks a pivotal day in Glasgow in 2021. On the morning of Eid al-fitr, a dawn raid was carried out by UK Immigration Enforcement on Kenmure Street. What started as a handful of neighbours blocking the enforcement van from moving two Muslim men to immigration detention turned into 2,000 Glaswegians standing down the Scottish police who were protecting UK immigration enforcement, despite them having no legal mandate forcing them to.
I remember this story hitting my Twitter/X feed during Covid. I remember the visuals of this small sleepy suburban street that looked very similar to London’s Rodney Road, where I lived during my Master’s degree, being taken over by residents. I remember a Palestinian flag looming over the scene. And I remember the diversity that showed up that day (in age, race, gender, religion, and every other metric). This wasn’t just about the Muslim community coming together on Eid. It wasn’t just about a visible minority immigrant community coming together for humane immigration policies. It wasn’t even about activists coming together to oppose the government. It was neighbours protecting neighbours by saying “this isn’t right, and I’m not going to stand aside”. It was regular people getting ready for Eid prayers and grocery shopping and lunch with their grandparents who just decided to sit down in the street and not allow a van to move (along with one brave individual who got underneath the van!).
The documentary itself is an 11/10, especially for anyone looking for a little hope in these turbulent times. I’m sure it’s no spoiler to say that there was a happy ending, and both men were released without condition (one went on to see their asylum claim approved, and the other, as it turned out, had full status and was detained as a case of mistaken identity).
Of course, dawn raids and the UK’s deplorable “Hostile Environment” continues to this day (it hasn’t seemed to matter whether it’s a Conservative or Labour government in charge, which feels eerily similar to what we’re seeing under PM Carney’s Liberals). But it’s a glimmer of hope into what’s possible if we actually band together to stand up, not for or against a particular cause, but just for our neighbours to be treated with some dignity.
A panel discussion after the movie talked at length about the role police play in immigration enforcement. From the gasps and sighs in the audience, it was clear that not everyone knows that the police actually have no obligation to assist in immigration enforcement but they choose to do so every day. From calling the CBSA on international student protesters in Calgary, to Toronto’s admitted over-policing of racialized communities, which brings police into the lives of immigrants at a disproportionately high level, immigrant lives are constantly under police scrutiny.
Even I have had a personal experience with the overpolicing of all things immigration, back in 2017 at Toronto’s Pearson airport.
When President Trump’s first Muslim travel ban came into force, an intrepid group called The Canadian Cross-Border Legal Coalition organized volunteer lawyers to set up at major Canadian airports to provide information on who was affected by the ban, and collect emails to provide people with further updates. I was proud to be a member, signed up dutifully for shifts, and got the chance to speak with dozens of individuals, almost all of whom where Canadian citizens with family impacted by the US travel ban.
We had the permission of the airport to be there. We were far out of reach of any security lineups and my setup was a grand total of one folding table, one folding chair, and my laptop. So imagine my surprise when one of my shifts was interrupted by a Toronto police officer who had no authority to intimidate me, but chose to do it anyways.
He came first, hand on holster, and without saying anything at all to me, stood in front of my desk. A Pearson security guard soon joined him. In a matter of minutes, I went from looking like a lawyer providing information to a fugitive being detained in plain sight. All this, despite the fact that I was only there to provide information, not to protest. To do my part to make sure my neighbours coming in and out of the US were treated with some dignity.
In hindsight, I’m quite lucky that the natural bravado inherent in being a junior lawyer meant that I stood my ground and went above their heads to my legal allies and Pearson’s head office. They cleared out as silently as they came, but for those 20 minutes of sitting behind them, you better believe I didn’t take my eyes off of the officer’s gun. And almost 10 years later, thinking back to that day still raises my adrenaline and heartbeat.
As far as I know, I’m the only lawyer that was intimated in such a way at Pearson airport during that campaign.
My only regret now is that I didn’t take my experience further than that day. I didn’t formally ask for the officer’s name (my verbal request to him went completely unanswered). I didn’t file a complaint with the TPS. I didn’t raise any trouble. I finished my volunteer shift and focused on what I thought was the task at hand. But to this day, I wonder if that officer is still a part of TPS, and how many other racialized women he’s harassed in his career?
So I’ve come to realize that the task at hand for someone like me is always going to go beyond the day I’m in.
With all the privileges of being a Canadian citizen, a lawyer, and someone with insight into the pressures on immigrant communities, the task at hand for me, every day, has to be continuing to look out my window out onto my community and to stop state appartus’ from overreach in any way possible.