President Donald Trump was right to suggest that there is a national security risk posed by open borders, the British government’s top terrorism expert has belatedly admitted in the wake of yet another gruesome, alleged migrant-versus-native outrage that triggered riots.
Senior lawyer Jonathan Hall, who has been the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation since 2019 and is the Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation under the National Security Act 2023, has demonstrated his remarkable perspicacity by noting that mass migration carries a security risk and a potential threat to “the health of the nation”.
Responding to the alleged “attempted beheading” of a man in Belfast on Monday night, the arrest of a Sudanese asylum seeker suspect by police, and the protests-cum-riots that have followed, watchdog boss Hall said that in the past the British government’s idea of security threats were generally focussed on home-grown terror, but that the “extraordinarily destabilising” influence of migrant crime should force a rethink.
Stating the longstanding government orthodoxy that mass migration is something to be viewed in terms of economics, Hall said:
I’m interested in the question of whether or not foreign nationality of recent migrants is becoming more relevant to the overall national security picture… it makes me think of something that I really haven’t heard a good answer to from the UK, which is what was said in Trump’s National Security Strategy in November 2025, and it was quite striking at the time.
He said, in perhaps rather overblown rhetoric that, well, this is destabilisation of Europe and he put an awful lot of that down to migration. Now, you may not agree with the language but I think it does raise the question that if certain countries are more likely, either to commit very serious offences or particular offences, or to get involved with state-backed activity, do we need to start thinking about migration now not simply in terms of the economy and housing, but also in terms of national security.
There never was a British response to President Trump’s warning to Europe that it was suffering a self-imposed process of “civilizational erasure”, he said. ‘Terror watchdog’ boss Hall continued:
I think it’s absolutely legitimate to talk about immigration in the context of national security and for myself I think it’s a conversation that’s been raised by the U.S. White House, and at the moment I haven’t heard a response, I’ve just heard silence.
The remarks came in an interview with the BBC, which is increasingly perceived as having done as much as any other body in Britain to suppress open discussion of any negatives associated with open borders. For the comments to be made on the public broadcaster demonstrates the speed with which the Overton Window is shifting, by framing the question with an acknowledgement that many had hitherto felt unable to discuss it for fear of appearing racist.
The discussion, on Radio Four’s flagship current affairs Today Programme, came with framing questions from the BBC presenter that clearly telegraphed that while discussions of the negatives of mass migration had been strongly discouraged in the past, even amounting to a de facto ban, such a prohibition was melting away. The interviewer posited that such discussions had never been had in establishment circles before because “people are worried, aren’t they? Worried about seeming to be racist, worried about encouraging the kind of criminality you’ve seen on the streets of Belfast”, and asked Hall whether the security threat of migration is now a “legitimate part of the political discussion”, to which he replied in the affirmative, saying it was “completely” so.
Hall followed up these remarks with an op-ed in Britain’s newspaper of record The Times, another clear indication that the British political establishment is signalling consent for migration to be discussed critically. Hall again criticised the choice of “cultural nationalist language” and “hyperbole” in President Trump’s criticism of Europe’s open borders policies, saying it could simply be “ignored” by some. Nevertheless, he said:
But I find it striking that so close an ally should say that European migration policies are “transforming the continent and creating strife”, and that these are matters relevant to the United States’ own national security. This begs the question, is immigration relevant to ours? …
… There was little online speculation about whether the assailant was a terrorist, so the public seems to have priced in the possibility of non-ideological violence after the Southport attack. But the sense of disturbance to the nation’s wellbeing can be just as significant as terrorism.
There are signs that the government recognises the salience of these issues. In April’s cohesion strategy it referred to the social cohesion as “a vital front in the resilience of our national security”. But if I am right that current patterns of migration have a national security dimension, then this must be relevant to policy, whether the government agrees with the tone of Trump’s document, or not.
As Breitbart News reported, the Trump White House’s new U.S. National Security Strategy in 2025 called out European states, including the United Kingdom, for undermining themselves with damaging policies. As well as economic failures, undermining sovereignty and liberty, censoring freedom of speech, and suppressing political dissidents, the document took aim at migration policies that are “transforming the continent and creating strife”, with a “loss of national identities and self-confidence”. Europe’s economic issues are “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure”, the administration found.
The thawing taboo surrounding immigration may be spreading within the policy-end of the discussion inhabited by professionals like top legal thinker Hall, but the political part of the government remains firmly wedded to the old paradigm, for now. A stark illustration of this orthodoxy came in Parliament this week when discussion of the “attempted beheading” in Belfast prompted a stern rebuke.
Irish Unionist parliamentarian Jim Allister asked the government in the Commons chamber of the knife attack: “We are all shocked by the sheer savagery of this attack… what will be done to stop the importation of alien cultures which thinks its appropriate to try and behead somebody in the United Kingdom?”. Speaking for the government was Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn, who adopted a chastising schoolmarm aspect to respond, with raised eyebrows: “I am sorry [he]… used the word ‘alien culture’, because what exactly is he referring to?”.
Veteran parliamentary sketch writer Quentin Letts noted that, unheard by the television cameras as their microphones had been muted, opposition Members chanted that the alien culture to which Allister referred was “beheading”. Allister later added that he believed that Benn’s making a show of taking offence at a phrase like “alien cultures” exchange showed how out of touch the government is.
“They do not realise that mass, uncontrolled immigration which had brought people of violent disposition into the hearts of our communities, and that has imported an alien culture,” he said.