Home Office bungles legal case to kick out foreign drug dealer

A JAMAICAN drug dealer has been allowed to stay in Britain indefinitely after the Home Office used the wrong piece of legislation in an attempt to send him home.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, tried to have Michael Evans Clarke, 34, excluded from this country under removal powers rather than deportation laws.

But immigration judges ruled against Mrs May’s approach and allowed the criminal’s appeal on human rights grounds, even though police believe him to be a high-risk offender.

Clarke was being investigated by Operation Nexus, Scotland Yard’s joint operation with the Home Office to target “high-harm foreign nationals”, the Upper Tribunal Asylum and Immigration Chamber was told.

He came to Britain in 2001 without a visa and was given temporary leave to remain, before going on the run.

In 2004 Clarke tried to regularise his status after marrying an EU national, and was granted a residence permit the following year.

In 2007 he was cautioned by police for assaulting a pregnant woman and was later given a 12-month community order for possession of cocaine and heroin.

He was jailed for four months in 2011 for possession of the same two Class A drugs. In 2014 the Home Of- fice began the process to have Clarke removed from this country.

A witness statement from an Operation Nexus detective said Clarke was “funding his lifestyle through dealing Class A drugs”. On “numerous occasions” the police had to deal with “the aftermath of domestic abuse the appellant had perpetrated against his partners”.

But even though he was jailed in 2014 for supplying crack cocaine, the lower immigration tribunal allowed Clarke’s appeal against removal from Britain, with a judge finding he appeared to have a positive relationship with his three children.

He allowed the appeal under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects the “right to private and family life”.

The Home Office appealed against the decision.

Judge Susan Kebede said in her ruling that she questioned the official presenting the Government’s case about the legislation relied on by the Home Office in its challenge against Clarke’s appeal. She noted that it “applied only in deportation cases, whereas this was a removal case”.

She found he could not be classed a “persistent offender” because it was a removal case, and the piece of legislation relied on by the Home Office “specifically refers to deportation”. The outcome “would have been very different” if the deportation laws had been used.