Machete thug won’t be kicked out... as he’s been here 10 years

CRIMINALS from Europe are granted special protections from deportation under rules imported from the EU.

When the Brexit transition period ended in December 2020, thousands of EU laws were ‘cut and pasted’ into the UK’s legal system.

European nationals who have been in the UK for a long time, or have significant cultural ties to the UK, can be deported only if they pose a ‘genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat’ to society.

Those who have lived legally in the UK for more than ten years, or were under 18 when they offended, may not be deported unless under ‘imperative grounds of public security’.

A Lithuanian thug who was part of a masked gang which threatened a teenager with a meat cleaver and assaulted her avoided deportation because the court ruled he was ‘low risk’. In another case, a gang member jailed over a machete attack, which left a victim with a ‘virtually severed arm’, avoided deportation to Latvia. Maksims Boikovs, pictured, was sentenced to 14 years in youth detention at the age of 18, with the judge labelling the drug-fuelled gang warfare a ‘blight upon life in this country’. But the Home Secretary has been unable to deport him to a Latvian jail despite telling the court Boikovs was ‘a dangerous gang member who had shown no remorse’ – because he has been in the UK for more than ten years.

Mrs Justice Foster upheld a First-Tier Tribunal decision to overturn the deportation. She ruled that ‘a number of factors suggested there was a prospect [Boikovs] may not return to criminal offending’.