Wishing you all a gentle, healthy, resilient and joyful New Year. 

Before we delve into 2026, let’s take a moment to reflect and celebrate what we achieved in 2025 – in what has been an increasingly difficult and hostile environment:

💥 At our Friday drop-in, we helped significantly more people than ever before, with both immigration and welfare advice.

💥 We recruited an L3 immigration adviser, a welfare adviser and five new trustees.

💥 We campaigned against the anti-migrant policies, spoke out against immigration raids in our community and fought the far-right. 

💥 We worked closely with national coalitions, including Citizens UK and Together With Refugees, on a range of campaigns and initiatives. 

💥 We hosted some amazing events: a poetry night for Refugee Week, a screening of ‘Name me Lawand’ with our friends Stories & Supper, and the incredible music event ‘Connections in Sound’ with Zelt, Leensaa Getachew, Nkomba, Jana Saleh, Lewis Robinson from Mais Um Discos, at the Walthamstow Trades Hall, marking International Migrants Day in true style. Read our article, Solidarity through Sound in the Waltham Forest Echo. 

💥 We joined the new Waltham Forest based initiative – Refugee and Migrant Network – working with others in our community to advocate for migrant justice. 

Thank you to everyone who supported us. 

📣 In particular, A MASSIVE SHOUT OUT & THANK YOU to the Year 6 students at Coppermill Primary School who hosted a bake-sale before Christmas and raised a whooping raised £178 for WFMA! You rock!

---

In the news

’m starting the year as a reluctant messenger – but we all know too well, ignorance isn’t always bliss. Immigration remains at the very top of the UK government agenda, and it is approaching with zeal and brutality.

New year, new law

On Monday 05 January, while many of us were still blowing away the festive cobwebs, the Home Office stepped into action and began implementing the Border Security, Immigration and Asylum Act. People held at the Manston processing centre are now subject to searches to seize phones, sim cards and electronics devices. 

As previously reported, the new law frames immigration through a counter terror lens, making space for even greater surveillance of and denial of rights for migrants.  

Raids, raids and more raids 

We’ve all seen what violent raids are doing in the US – we’ve seen less in the media about widespread community responses. Let’s not be fooled into thinking that such murderous tactics are confirmed to the one country. We are already seeing example in the UK mimicking ICE. 

The hostile office has set up a new Tik Tok account – @SecureBordersUK – showing footage of raids, arrests and deportations.

Riot police, with dogs and teargas, are attacking people seeking safety who are protesting against state violence at Harmondsworth and Brook House detention centres, where they are being detained as part of the infamous ‘one in – one out’ deal with France. 

But no amount of cruelty will appease the far right. Extreme nationalists demand that only British born people have the right to be here … which, in a context of plummeting net migration, is nonsensical.

Ending on a positive note. Towards the end of last year, migrant justice campaigner Zoe Gardner, publish a report with Another Europe is Possible, Time for change: the evidence-based policies that can actually fix the immigration system, in which she explores safe routes, the right to work, citizenship, and more providing practical solutions that would benefit us all.