The influencer posed as an asylum seeker to get into a migrant hotel “to find out what really happens.”
Influencer discusses posing as asylum seeker in migrant hotel
An influencer and YouTuber who infiltrated a migrant hotel to “find out what really happens” has sparked fury after he blasted “council estate scruffs” for attacking migrants. Husnain Asif spoke on LBC earlier this year, where he explained why he decided to pose as an asylum seeker to get into a migrant hotel.
Now his comments have resurfaced online and have provoked fury at a particularly tense time, amid ongoing protests and heated debate in the UK over immigration and asylum accommodation. Its renewed circulation has prompted a fresh wave of reaction on social media, with some users focusing particularly on Mr Asif’s comments describing critics as “council estate scruffs”. He said: “What we were getting forced down our throats by the Tommy Robinsons and all this s*** on Twitter that we’d see was just out there more than anything else so I wanted to actually see what went on once I was in there and then I didn’t feel anyone had actually spoken to the migrants themselves and found out what they’re actually doing here, what are their backstories, why are they here, what do they actually want to do.”
Husnain Asif spoke about his experience (Image: LBC)
When speaking with the LBC presenter in January 2026, he said he was shocked by how the migrants were depressed.
He continued: “What they want to do is work. Naturally, people want a purpose; people want to do something. All these little council estate scruffs on Facebook think they’re sat there living this luxury life when they’re not. Half of them are seeing doctors for depression and stuff. They’ve risked their life going through traumatic situations at sea and then they’re just sat in a hotel room and they’re not allowed to do anything else, just sit in their room every single day. It’s literally the same day on repeat for them.”
One X (formerly Twitter) user called his comments “judgmental” adding: “We know what the men in these hotels are like because we see the reports of their crimes everyday in the press.”
Another X user said: “From when he said ‘council estate scruffs’ I didn’t care about anything else he said.” Someone else wrote: “Council Estate scruffs.’ Everyone had some prejudice I suppose.” One person commented: “So if the men are nice people why do they separate the women and children from men ? However they integrate them into our society ?”
The documentary, published on YouTube in December 2025, has amassed 194,249 views. Mr Asif has 1.6m followers on TikTok where he uses the handle “Massive Asif” to share vlogs, travel content, and comedic lifestyle videos with followers. He was also a contestant on Netflix’s reality competition series Squid Game: The Challenge.
When asked what he would say to someone who would be nervous about having an asylum near to where they live, Mr Asif said: “For what reason is there to be nervous? What that they’re brown?” To which the presenter said: “No, that people don’t know who they are.”
Mr Asif then answered: “But you don’t know who anyone is. There’s people born in this country that live down the road from you that could be a serial killer.
“Just because they came from a different country, you think that moment when you cross the city that it just turns you into some raging serial killer rapist? That’s not what happens, there’s not some powers in the English Channel that just changes the way people are. When I posted the video everyone was like oh yeah where are the women and children?
“There are separate hotels for women and children. Obviously it’s safer to keep grown men in a separate hotel and then women and children in a separate hotel.”
He added: “You can’t just assume that anyone’s just going to do the worse.
“I just wanted to show both sides of things. I didn’t hear one person who had a bad intention of being here or wanted to abuse any sort of system.”
As of June 2026, the Government was using just under 170 hotels to accommodate asylum seekers, down from a peak of around 400 in 2023. The UK government plans to end the use of hotels for housing asylum seekers by 2029. In 2024–25, the UK Parliament Committees report notes that the Home Office and Ministry of Justice spent an estimated £4.9 billion on the asylum system, with the Home Office accounting for roughly £2.7 billion of that total specifically for asylum accommodation.
The Express has contacted Husnain Asif for comment.