HE DOES one of the most difficult jobs in the country, some would say. Bas Javid, brother of former chancellor Sajid, is the director general for immigration enforcement at the Home Office. He was appointed in November 2023. With a budget exceeding £779 million and a staff of more than 6,200, the department will target criminal gangs that facilitate illegal immigration and apprehending individuals who are in the country unlawfully.

“I think my coming from an immigrant back ground and family of immigrants, with personal experiences of racism and bias, enables me to come from a place of compassion in this job. I don’t know if any previous director of immigration enforcement has been from a minority ethnic background or had parents who came to the UK from another country,” Javid said recently. “But when I talk about compassion, that means the ability to understand people’s concerns or plight or circumstances. I think anyone can have this mindset but coming from a migration background myself maybe it’s more automatic,” he said.

“We see people who have been smuggled here, people who believed they would have a better life, but are living in squalid conditions,” Javid said. His plan is to revamp immigration enforcement, emphasising the recent government laws aimed at addressing shortcomings, which will lead to the removal of undocumented individuals, especially those with criminal backgrounds, from the UK. His father, Abdul Ghani-Javid, was 17 when he arrived in the UK from Pakistan in 1961. Settling in Rochdale, he initially toiled in cotton mills before becoming a bus driver later in Bristol. Along with wife, Zubaid, they raised five sons: Sajid (the former chancellor Sajid Javid) and Bas (short for Basit), along with Tariq, Atif, and Khalid. Tariq died in 2018, while Atif works as a property developer in Bristol,