"I Policed the Border for 40 Years - the System is Broken" - Tony Smith CBE

October 21, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Tony Smith spent 40 years working at the UK border, rising to lead the Border Force. He describes a system that has been transformed from one where an immigration officer could summarily refuse entry to anyone they deemed suspicious, to the current situation where someone who reaches British waters and says "asylum" can be in a community within 24 to 48 hours with minimal vetting. Smith argues the system is not just failing—it is "completely broken."

The Old System: Summary Powers at the Border

Smith began his career in the 1970s and 1980s under the Immigration Act 1971, which is still technically in force but has been "chopped and changed." As an immigration officer at Heathrow, he had strong statutory powers: he could arrest, detain, and remove people. If a traveler's story didn't add up—say, someone claiming to be on holiday but carrying a waiter's uniform and an alarm clock—Smith could simply refuse them entry and send them back. In-country enforcement was similarly direct. He could arrest suspected overstayers and remove them with a letter to an airline captain, bypassing the criminal justice system entirely. "Nobody claimed asylum back then," Smith notes. "Nobody claimed human rights." People would accept the decision and leave quietly.

The Watershed: Asylum Trumps Border Control

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Show Notes

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