As a British citizen, I get stopped for 40 minutes wait due to wrong record of refusal to entry

Question

I came to the UK under a Tier 2 visa about 10 years ago. After the 5th year, I obtained my Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and a year later, I became a citizen. Since I started using my UK passport, I have randomly experienced issues at the border as the border force officers see some sort of refusal to entry record with my name, date of birth, and birthplace matching. Given that I have a unique Turkish first and last name, it is highly unlikely that someone else has the same details.

Due to this issue, most of the time I am unable to use the e-gates. When the officers stop me, they take me to the waiting area and conduct checks for approximately 30-40 minutes to ensure everything is in order. Every time this happens, they come back and tell me I am good to go, but they do not know why they saw what they saw on the screen.

I have tried to reach out to Border Force via their complaints line, but they refuse to acknowledge that this issue is due to a wrong record. They respond by saying "Our officers have the right to do any checks they need to do their job," which I understand and expect from a border officer. However, the fact that they are doing this due to a wrong record is a waste of time for everyone.

I also reached out to my MP and received a response from the MP's Correspondence email. After asking for some information, they told me they cannot understand the exact nature of my email, even though the email clearly asks: "Is there any record of refusal to entry with my Turkish passport, and if so, what can we do to fix it?"

This issue causes great disruption to my travels, especially when traveling with my family. Leaving my wife and son to handle all the luggage while I am being checked is not ideal. There is also a risk of missing my connecting flight due to these random delays.

At this point, I am running out of options, and suing the Home Office seems to be the only way to correct this issue. It is frustrating to be stopped for an extended period, have my passport taken, and then be told I am okay to go.

I would appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Answer 1

I would suggest that you refrain from trying to diagnose the problem. You may overestimate the uniqueness of your name, for example, or underestimate the fuzziness of Home Office similarity matching. If the refusal of entry record was in fact for someone else, then seeking "records of refusal for [your] Turkish passport" isn't going to lead to a solution. There may be no such records. It may be, in fact, that these incidents are not "due to a wrong record"; there could be wrong logic or maybe even right logic. Your goal is not to get them to acknowledge the cause of their past behavior but to get them to stop behaving that way in the future.

Instead, focus on the effect on you: the disruption impinges on your right to enter your country of citizenship and as you say is disruptive of your travels. Also focus on the effect this has on Home Office officers and, by extension, the taxpayers of the United Kingdom: as you say, this is a waste of time for everyone.

I would try the MP's office once more with this approach. Not "tell me what's going wrong" but "help me getting this to stop." One solution would be to have your identity or at least your passport noted as not being associated with whatever incident is leading them to investigate you. Or, if it is in fact some incident in your pre-naturalization past, to note that you are indeed legitimately naturalized as a British citizen. I'm not aware of the UK having a system similar to the "redress number" of the United States, but presumably if they have a database record that repeatedly flags you for greater scrutiny, that record can be modified, amended, or linked to another record that should eliminate or at least reduce this additional scrutiny.

You might also try a newspaper. I can't find it now but I have a vague recollection of reading a column covering someone's difficulty with some government department or other. If a columnist will publicize your plight then you might see some relief. Everything I could find just now was oriented to consumer problems, however, so it didn't seem likely that they'd take you on.

I assume you're aware of the Border Force's Complaints procedure page. If you haven't done so already, follow the link there for submitting a subject access request. You may find a useful clue.

Also, if you haven't already, pursue your complaint as far as the Independent Examiner of Complaints (link taken from the bottom of the main complaints page). Even if they can't disclose to you exactly what the reason is for your troubles, they may be able to determine that it is indeed spurious and help to resolve it.

Answer 2

Hah, just after I post this, I got response to my latest enquiry to border force complaints (Another complaint I did after the one which didn't solve my issue) and it assured me I shouldn't experience further delays when I travel in the future. Hopefully this means I can start using e-gates. Let's see.

I think I will download this response from them to my phone, just in case.

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I initiated conversation from multiple channels:

• Via my MP, who raised my enquiry to home office and I got an email from MPE Correspondence team in Home office. However my replies to this office got handled by Digital Correspondence Allocation Team of UKVI in a really bad way. In each e-mail they sent, they asked me random piece of information which I already provided and they told me eventually they can't understand what my email asks and shut down the case.

• Second channel I used and the one I referred to at the top is borderforcecomplaintsandcompliments@homeoffice.gov.uk email channel. It auto replied to me first, than 10 days later the actual response came. But this is not the first time for me, when I first experienced this issue I used this channel again and when I compare the letters they basically say the same things almost word by word. Given they assured me before, but I had the issue again I'm not 100% sure the issue is sorted.