Deportations of criminals blocked by 11th-hour appeal

PRITI Patel has been forced to cancel the deportation of 50 convicted Jamaican criminals after a last-minute legal challenge.

The Home Secretary’s plans to remove the detainees, convicted of offences including manslaughter and rape, were blocked after campaigners said the deportation would risk repeating the mistakes of the Windrush scandal.

The deportation flight had been due to leave the UK early this morning.

But after lawyers for some of the detainees applied for a judicial review yesterday, a judge ruled the deportations should not go ahead if the Jamaican nationals were not able to make phone calls to their lawyers from the two detention centres near Heathrow where they were being held.

Campaigners hailed the ruling as a victory yesterday as they said it would block the deportation of at least 56 detainees.

However, it was unclear if detainees held at other centres, such as one near Gatwick, could still be deported on the flight this morning.

Sources told the Mail the flight will take off as planned, but it is unclear how many detainees will be on board.

Lady Justice Simler granted the order without a court hearing following an urgent application by charity Detention Action, which argued some of the detainees at Colnbrook and Harmondsworth immigration removal centres could not use their phones after an O2 phone mast stopped working in the area.

This meant they did not have adequate access to legal advice. Last night the Home Office said it is seeking an appeal. ‘We are urgently asking the judge to reconsider their ruling and it would be inappropriate to comment further whilst legal proceedings are ongoing,’ a spokesman said.

Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, said: ‘We are delighted with this landmark decision which is a victory for access to justice, fairness and the rule of law. On the basis of this order from our Court of Appeal we do not believe anyone currently detained at the Heathrow detention centres can be removed on tomorrow’s flight.’ Toufique Hossain, director of public law at law firm Duncan Lewis, said: ‘For weeks now detainees’ complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Their removal looms large, hours away, and yet again it takes judicial intervention to make the Home Office take basic, humane and fair steps to allow people to enjoy their constitutional right to access justice.’

A separate injunction to halt the flight was refused. More than 170 MPs had urged the Government to stop the flight, which had been chartered privately by the Home Office. Critics said the deportation flight risks repeating errors made in 2018 when migrants from the Caribbean – known as the Windrush generation – were wrongly deported.

No 10 defended the latest deportation attempt. ‘ It’s correct to say some of those on board are convicted of manslaughter, rape, violence and drug dealing,’ Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said.

‘It is long-standing government policy that any foreign national offender sentenced to 12 months or more in prison should be considered for deportation.’

Thought to be among the deportees are a 23-year- old man, who arrived in Britain aged five, jailed for 15 months for drug offences and a 40year-old man jailed for seven years for a stabbing.

‘Landmark decision’

FEW readers will have sympathy for up to 50 convicted criminals due to be deported from Britain to Jamaica.

They include men who have raped, killed and dealt hard drugs. All received custodial sentences of at least a year – some much longer. All are Jamaican nationals. And all have exhausted appeals procedures.

Under legislation introduced by Labour in 2007, it is entirely legal for them to be sent back to their country of origin.

Campaigners, however, claim there is a risk of repeating the wrongs of the Windrush scandal, when scores of people of Caribbean origin were deported despite having lived and worked here almost all their lives.

They say some on this flight came to Britain decades ago as small children and now have youngsters of their own.

Is it fair, they ask, to pack them off to a country of which they know nothing?

The comparison with Windrush is spurious, as those involved in that affair were not criminals. But there could be an issue of proportionality with some of these men.

The public must be protected and the law be allowed to take its course. The threat of deportation is a vital deterrent for foreign nationals tempted to commit crime.

But could there be a case for lesser offenders who have been here since infancy, have families here and for whom Jamaica is merely a dim memory, being allowed to stay after serving their time?

■ AUSTRALIA has joined New Zealand and Canada by withdrawing funding from the Commonwealth Secretariat in protest at the lavish spending of its Secretary-General Baroness Scotland, and her questionable judgement in awarding a £250,000 commission to a firm run by fellow Labour peer Lord Patel. Her backers are trying to make this into a race issue. It is not. It’s an issue of confidence. Lady Scotland has performed woefully and her position is untenable. She should go now.