UK Home Office Accused of Secretly Expanding AI Use in Immigration System

A new report from the Open Rights Group alleges that artificial intelligence has been quietly built into many functions of the UK's Home Office, deepening what it describes as a hostile environment for immigrants.

According to the report, AI tools are now used for tasks such as flagging potential sham marriages, estimating the age of asylum seekers, scanning the phone contents of new arrivals, and summarizing asylum interviews. The technology is also reportedly used for border surveillance through facial recognition, drones and satellites, as well as in a case prioritization system called Ipic.

The report's authors say this rollout has happened largely in secrecy, with officials frequently citing national security to deny freedom of information requests or redact details. They argue successive governments have treated complex immigration cases as problems that can be solved through technology, risking bias and discrimination embedded in AI systems.

The research received backing from lawmakers across party lines, including from Labour, the Scottish National Party and the Green Party. One lawmaker said the Home Office has been reluctant to disclose how AI is used in asylum processing or how accountability failures would be addressed. A representative from Open Rights Group said migration should be treated as a human experience rather than a technical issue, and called for urgent transparency and regulation.

The advocacy group is urging the government to regulate AI use in immigration, ban applications that threaten human rights or democratic accountability, strengthen freedom of information rules, narrow the definition of national security, and create a public registry of government AI tools.

A Home Office spokesperson responded that AI is only one tool used to protect borders and does not replace human decision-making. The spokesperson said asylum decisions are made by trained caseworkers, with AI assisting only in reviewing interview records and policy information, and that the department monitors these tools and plans to publish updated evaluations of their use.