I thought that I would never see my family again

PAULETTE Wilson was 10 when she came to the UK from Jamaica in 1968. Because she never applied for a British passport and had no papers proving she had a right to be in the UK, she was classified as an illegal immigrant.

Last October she spent a week in Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire before being sent to the immigration removal centre at Heathrow, where detainees are taken just before they are deported. Only a last-minute intervention from her MP and a charity prevented her forced removal.

Mrs Wilson, 61, a former House of Commons cook, has paid national insurance for 34 years and has a long history of working and paying UK taxes. She has no links with Jamaica – her daughter Natalie and granddaughter were born here.

After reporting to a Home Office centre in Solihull, Birmingham, for questioning she was taken to Yarl’s Wood in a secure van and told she would be sent out of the country. Mrs Wilson described the ordeal as the worst experience of her life. “I felt like I didn’t exist,” she said.

“I wondered what was going to happen to me. All I did was cry, thinking of my daughter and granddaughter, thinking that I wasn’t going to see them again.

“I was panicking because that evening they took away a lady. I watched her crying and being taken away. It was very scary.”

Mrs Wilson has since been given a biometric card proving she is in the UK legally but will have to reapply in 2024. She has had no apology from the Home Office.