Deportation farce may let criminals on streets in days

BORIS Johnson last night ordered a new war on the courts after judges blocked the deportation of dozens of Jamaican criminals – meaning they could be back on the streets in days.

The hardened offenders – including a killer, a rapist, a gunman, violent thugs and dealers of Class A drugs – are set to be released after the Court of Appeal gave them a last-gasp reprieve.

The Prime Minister vowed to use the scandal to fast-track a review in a bid to crack down on abuses of the legal system.

Meanwhile, shadow home secretary Diane Abbott fuelled accusations that Labour is soft on crime by insisting many of the offences committed were ‘relatively not that serious’.

Up to 89 foreign offenders were due to leave from a UK airport yesterday. Ministers said the men all posed a danger to the public.

But a furious row broke out with Labour MPs and immigration lawyers trying to halt the flight. It finally left with just 17 on board.

Campaigners said the deportation flight risked repeating the mistakes of the Windrush scandal in 2018 when migrants from the Caribbean who arrived in Britain before 1973 were wrongly removed.

But Downing Street vehemently refuted the claim, pointing to the passengers’ law-breaking. The Court of Appeal ruled on a technicality that 25 criminals should not be removed because they were unable to make phone calls to their lawyers from two detention centres near Heathrow.

However, officials pointed out the men had access to landline telephones, Skype, the internet, email and legal surgeries at the facilities.

Ministers ordered an urgent appeal to overturn the ‘perverse’ decision. Seventeen more offenders escaped being kicked out of the country by submitting 11th-hour asylum claims. And at least 12 separate applications for judicial review were made in the days before the flight took off.

Controversial guidelines say those who have completed prison sentences should be kept behind bars only if deporting them imminently is a ‘realistic prospect’.

Because immigration and asylum cases can take many months, most of those who avoided deportation to Jamaica will be granted immigration bail – potentially endangering the public. Mr Johnson said yesterday: ‘Obviously we don’t want to do anything that’s in contravention of the law, but on the other hand I think these individuals should have taken the precaution of not being serious criminals.

‘I think the public will understand it’s right for us to deport people who are guilty of very serious offences.’ Sources close to Home Secretary Priti Patel said: ‘All the Labour politicians who are trying every trick in the book to stop these deportation flights never think about the victims.

‘People suffered terrible crimes at the hands of these offenders and yet these campaigners couldn’t give a stuff.’

‘They never think about the victims’