First Rwanda flight could take off as soon as June 24

THE earliest Rwanda deportation flight could leave the country on June 24, court documents reveal.

The Government had originally suggested flights would start between July 1 and 15, as first reported by

but it has now advised a High Court judge the “earliest possible date” will be the week beginning June 24.

The disclosure by the Government’s legal department was in response to a legal challenge against the Rwanda policy by the First Division Association (FDA), which represents civil servants.

The union claims it would be unlawful for civil servants to obey ministerial instructions to ignore rule 39 injunctions by the European Court of Human Rights, a power handed to ministers in Rishi Sunak’s Safety of Rwanda Act.

The FDA says officials would be in breach of the civil service code if they were to flout international law by ignoring the injunctions.

Hundreds of migrants are being detained ahead of the first deportation flights. They will be held at immigration removal centres until they can be deported to Rwanda.Those detained are among 5,700 migrants whose applications for asylum have been denied after they arrived in the UK illegally between January 2022 and June last year.

Officials are targeting 2,145 whom they believe give the best prospect of removal and have been subject to faceto-face reporting as part of their immigration bail conditions.

The remaining 3,557 migrants are subject to reporting conditions including by email or phone.

The Rwanda scheme is central to the Prime Minister’s pledge to stop the boats and he is aiming for a regular “drumbeat” of flights to the east African state over the summer.

Previous plans suggested officials would aim for three flights a week, with around 50 migrants on each, overseen by 150 escorts at a ratio of three to one.

The migrants can be detained for the entire nine to 11 weeks before their scheduled flights provided there is a realistic prospect of removal from the UK in a “reasonable” timescale.

Lawyers believe they will be able to mount legal challenges to individual migrants’ deportation under the Safety of Rwanda Act even though the legislation was designed to restrict appeals.