Shock ruling ‘won’t hit Rwanda scheme’

Migration law ‘at odds with Good Friday Agreement’

ANOTHER shock court ruling will not damage plans to deport migrants to Rwanda, the Prime Minister insisted last night.

The High Court in Belfast yesterday ordered the “disapplication” of sections of the Illegal Migration Act, claiming they undermine human rights laws.

Democratic Unionist Party leader Gavin Robinson warned the ruling will make Northern Ireland a “magnet for asylum seekers”.

Banned

Solicitors also claimed it would mean migrants living there cannot be sent to the East African country.

Rishi Sunak and former home secretary Suella Braverman introduced the IMA to deter migrants from crossing the Channel.

It banned people from claiming asylum if they arrived in the country illegally.

But in Belfast, Mr Justice Humphreys found that several elements of the Act cause a “significant” diminution of the rights enjoyed by asylum seekers residing in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

He also declared aspects of it are incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

One of the cases was taken by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the other by a 16-year-old asylum seeker from Iran who is living in the province having arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied child.

The boy, who travelled from France by small boat and claimed asylum in July 2023, has said he would be killed or sent to prison if he was returned to Iran.

No10 will appeal against the ruling, but Mr Sunak said: “This judgment changes nothing about our operational plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda this July or the lawfulness of our Safety of Rwanda Act.

“We continue to work to get regular flights off to Rwanda in the coming weeks and nothing will distract us from that or delivering to the timetable I set out. We must start the flights to stop the boats.

“I have been consistently clear that the commitments in the Belfast [Good Friday] Agreement should be interpreted as they were always intended, and not expanded to cover issues like illegal migration.”

Outside court, solicitor Sinead Marmion, who represented the teenage Iranian, said: “This is a huge thorn in the Government’s side and it has completely put a spanner in the works. There’s a huge obstacle in the way of them being able to implement that in Northern Ireland.”

The latest setback comes after the Supreme Court last year ruled against the Rwanda scheme amid fears that migrants would be subsequently deported to their home countries.

The Safety of Rwanda Act was drafted to deal with issues identified in the Supreme Court’s ruling on the legality of the scheme.