UKBA applied policy to vulnerable people, including unaccompanied children
The High Court has ruled that the Government’s policy of fast track removal of some failed asylum seekers is illegal because it denies them access to justice.
In a case brought against UK Border Agency (UKBA) by the charity Medical Justice, the High Court quashed the UKBA policy whereby foreign nationals can be removed from the UK with little or no warning after individuals were denied access to justice in the process.
Immigration officers have descended on vulnerable people late at night and transported them under guard to early morning flights a few hours later.
Medical Justice, a charity that provides independent medical advice to immigration detainees, claimed that some people were not able to contact a legal representative and challenge their removal. Mr. Nyam, a seriously ill man that Medical Justice has assisted, was arrested for removal to Cameroon in a manner that a judge described as “completely unconscionable”.
Represented by the Public Law Project, Medical Justice challenged UKBA’s policy that allowed the standard 72 hours notice of removal directions to be reduced to little or no notice for certain categories of cases, including where there is medical documentation indicating that prior notice will create a risk of suicide or self harm and where standard notification is “not in the best interests” of an unaccompanied child due to an abscond risk.
UKBA claimed that their policy had safeguards built in that ensure the removee had access to justice. Medical Justice cited a number of cases where the safeguards were inadequate or simply denied to the removee. It was also noted that an Equality Impact Assessment of the policy had candidly acknowledged that the possibility of a removee lodging a judicial review in time was not available.
UKBA claimed the policy was rarely used, was only used with care, and that its use was highly monitored. Yet on the various occasions UKBA supplied data, the number of people on whom they say they have used the policy went up from 24 to 145, suggesting UKBA had difficulties monitoring its own use of the policy.
One UKBA witness statement revealed that responsibility for monitoring implementation of the policy drifted from one department to another, and finally evaporated altogether. The UKBA representative said in his witness statement: "I can only assume that responsibility for producing the [monitoring] reports was overlooked following this latest re-structuring".
T, an unaccompanied minor, had been forced to earn a living by prostitution in Italy and had been raped there and in Libya. She came from Italy to the UK when she was 15 years old. She was removed back to Italy in order that, under the Dublin Regulations, her asylum claim be considered there. She was given no notice of the removal. According to Mr. Justice Collins, “she was descended upon by a posse of enforcement officers at 4 o’clock in the morning, no doubt aroused from sleep; was bundled out and taken straight to the airport, and was given no opportunity whatever of contacting anyone.”
A UKBA witness statement detailed nine cases of little or no notice removals where the cases did not even fall within the UKBA policy. On three occasions the policy was implemented concerning a family and in two cases it was decided that health grounds prevented the detention of a child of the family. Medical Justice noted with concern that a child not fit for detention was considered for removal.
One Medical Justice client was removed with no notice and the UKBA was not even applying the policy. The man’s barrister, Mr. Jan Doerfel, secured a High Court order to have him brought back to the UK.
Emma Ginn, Co-ordinator, Medical Justice welcomed the ruling, saying that: “It felt like the policy was designed to remove vulnerable people from the country in a way that denied them any real chance to speak to a lawyer. Quite apart from the affront to justice, the cost in human misery was a source of shame.
“Though the ones who paid the highest price were those subjected to this unimaginably cruel procedure, it did not go unnoticed that the seeming belligerence of the Home Office must have cost the public purse significantly; abandoning removal attempts, bringing deportees back to the UK, and the legal fees of avoidable legal proceedings to name but a few. It feels like UKBA chanced their arm to see what they could get away with, in the knowledge that many vulnerable victims’ voices would not be heard in the middle of the night.”
