Migrants in Northern Ireland cannot be deported to Rwanda, High Court rules

‘This judgment changes nothing about our operational plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda’

ASYLUM seekers cannot be deported to Rwanda from Northern Ireland, a High Court judge has ruled.

Mr Justice Humphreys said the Government’s law allowing asylum seekers to be deported to Rwanda should be disapplied in Northern Ireland as it undermined human rights protections guaranteed in the region under postbrexit arrangements.

The judge also said aspects of the Illegal Migration Act were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The Act, introduced last year, gives ministers powers to detain asylum seekers who have arrived illegally in the UK and deport them to a safe third country such as Rwanda.

The post-brexit Windsor Framework jointly agreed by the UK and EU includes a stipulation that there can be no diminution of the rights provisions contained within Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement of 1998.

Mr Justice Humphreys found that several elements of the Act caused a “significant” diminution of the rights enjoyed by asylum seekers residing in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. The legal challenge was brought by the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission on behalf of a 16-year-old asylum seeker from Iran, who arrived in the UK from France by small boat as a child and is now living in the region.

The Government vowed to appeal the ruling in the Northern Irish courts while Rishi Sunak insisted the court judgment would not derail or delay his Rwanda scheme and plans for deportation flights by July. The Prime Minister said: “This judgment changes nothing about our operational plans to send illegal migrants to Rwanda this July or the lawfulness of our illegal migration act.”

He added: “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.”

Immigration lawyers said the decision was “potentially very significant” but they did not believe it would affect the initial flights.

However, they believed it could pave the way for a legal challenge in England and Wales if and when the Government activated the provisions of the Illegal Migration Act and sought to deport them under that piece of legislation.

Government lawyers had argued it was inappropriate to declare parts of un-commenced legislation as being incompatible with the Human Rights Act, which puts the ECHR into UK law.

But the court said, given the Government’s repeated statements it was bringing the Rwanda plan into force, that it would. It found the Illegal Migration Act broke human rights rules on the treatment of children, potential victims of modern slavery and the removal of migrants to Rwanda before their claims were determined.

Gavin Robinson, the DUP leader, said his party had “repeatedly warned that the Government’s efforts on immigration would not apply in Northern Ireland” but it had not listened.

Ignoring the courts would be “sleepwalking into the creation of an immigration border in the Irish Sea”, he added.