Last-minute legal onslaught halts migrant deportations

PRITI PATEL was forced to abandon a deportation flight returning illegal Channel migrants to Spain yesterday after human rights lawyers mounted last-minute legal actions.

Sources said the Home Office was hit by so many eleventh-hour claims that it had no option but to cancel the flight, which would have returned 23 illegal migrants who arrived in the UK on small boats from France.

It came as the Home Office was embroiled in a row with lawyers over a video it posted on attempts to remove migrants in which it said current regulations were “allowing activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns”.

The Home Secretary is planning to overhaul asylum laws which she has reportedly claimed are being “exploited by Leftie Labour-supporting lawyers” trying to stop the Government removing people.

She is working on a “fair borders Bill,” to be introduced this year, which would stop people drawing out the asylum application process by making them declare all their grounds for refugee status when they apply, rather than being able to submit new reasons later.

She is understood to be “furious” at yesterday’s legal attempts to stop Britain clamping down on migrants crossing the Channel by ensuring they are returned to the EU country in which

‘We have lots more [deportations] planned over coming weeks and months. It is not going to deter us’

they first arrived and where they should have applied for asylum.

A Whitehall source said: “There was 100 per cent legal attrition rate on the flight due to unprecedented and organised casework barriers sprung on the Government by law firms. We have lots more planned over coming weeks and months. It is not going to deter us.”

Under the Dublin Agreement, EU countries accept back migrants if it can be shown it was their first EU port of entry and so they should have applied for asylum there. Madrid had agreed to take back the migrants, who passed through Spain on their way to Britain.

The illegal migrants’ lawyers were, however, able to “bog the process down in legal quagmire”, according to the Whitehall insider. It is thought they would have claimed breaches under the European Convention on Human Rights including their rights to a family life or that they risked persecution if they were denied asylum.

Lawyers also increasingly use modern slavery legislation to claim migrants are victims of trafficking who

can claim the right to live in the UK.

A Home Office spokesman said “entirely legitimate” returns were too often frustrated by last-minute legal challenges. “These claims are very often baseless and entirely without merit but are given full legal consideration, leading to removal being rescheduled,” they added. “This can effectively result in the timing out of a return due to stringent Dublin regulations.”

It came less than 24 hours after the Home Office published a video online showing a graphic of planes leaving the UK with the caption: “We are working to remove migrants with no right to remain in the UK. But currently return regulations are rigid and open to abuse ... allowing activist lawyers to delay and disrupt returns.”

Lawyers branded it an “assault on the rule of law” using “divisive and deceptive language”.

Prof Jonathan Portes, a King’s College London economist, complained to Matthew Rycroft, the Home Office permanent secretary, about the video.

In a post on Twitter, Prof Portes quoted Mr Rycroft’s response as: “I agree the phrase you quote should not have been used on an official government channel. I have made clear to the team this post should not be used again from Home Office accounts or anywhere else by civil servants.”

The Home Office press office confirmed the response was accurate.