Yorkshire Rose, real name Amanda Smith, is a “migrant hunter” from Castleford in West Yorkshire who has been among the most prolific asylum accommodation harassers in the country. Over the course of 2022 and 2023, Smith made roughly 200 visits to sites of temporary asylum accommodation, predominantly across the Midlands, Yorkshire, North East and North West.

Smith, a former organiser for the English Defence League (EDL) and Britain First, posts videos frequently onto her YouTube and X/Twitter accounts, documenting her accommodation visits. These visits often take place alongside her fellow “migrant hunter” Alan Leggett (AKA Active Patriot), and in previous years with a man known as “The Bulldog”.

The visits tend to involve long commentaries about the location in question featuring rumour and, less frequently, a news story. Smith attempts to film migrants on site, and will often try, and frequently fail, to find a way inside the building.

Smith regularly changes up her tactics to try and force the kinds of interactions she wants for her channel and gain entry to the buildings. These vary from feigning confusion (“I was told this hotel was for homeless people”) to faking kindness towards asylum seekers. The frequency of Smith’s content, coupled with her often confrontational approach, has produced a significant viewership on YouTube.

In October 2023, Smith was arrested for aggravated trespass at RAF Scampton and subjected to bail conditions restricting her from within 200 metres of the site. In January 2024, this was extended by a further three months.

Smith is no stranger to the legal system. In January 2021, she and Leggett were arrested for causing alarm and distress, and were supposedly hit with bail conditions banning them from North Yorkshire. Smith has previously harassed staff at COVID-19 test centres, claiming the virus was fake.

Smith has previously posted content of the fascist group, Patriotic Alternative, as well as reposting messages full of racism and Islamophobia. She has also referred to Channel-crossings as an “invasion”. Last year Smith was accompanied on several occasions by Michael Horgan, the man behind the Michator Media YouTube channel.

Matching the general decline in migrant hunter activism in 2024, Smith made at least 36 accommodation visits in the year, almost all of them between January and July. In the aftermath of the Southport attack, Smith used her X/Twitter account to promote upcoming demonstrations around the country, and Smith herself attended the Leeds demonstration on 3 August as disorder swept the country.

Like Leggett, Smith also suffered yet more legal trouble in 2024. In March, she claimed that her arrest at RAF Scampton in 2023 for aggravated trespass had been upgraded to an investigation under Section 18 of the Public Order Act. On 7 August, Smith was arrested again for inciting racial hatred online and held in custody for 36 hours, whereupon she was released without charge but with a series of bail conditions. In early October, Smith was notified that the police were taking no further action. She subsequently announced that she would be suing West Yorkshire Police for “unlawful arrest”, revealing that she was also pursuing a similar case against Lincolnshire Police.