Having been given a very hard time of it in the Court of Appeal, the Home Secretary has finally been vindicated in her series of appeals concerning the process for depriving people of their British citizenship. The Supreme Court has held that procedural fairness can be achieved through a statutory...
The case concerns a settlement application made on behalf of a child under paragraph 297 of Part 8 which was instead granted as limited leave under Appendix FM because although her father was a British citizen resident in the UK, her mother only had limited leave. The Court of Appeal...
In Majera v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1597, the Court of Appeal considered the right approach to the ‘very compelling circumstances’ test in deportation cases where the foreign criminal claims to have been rehabilitated. This is a useful reminder of the limited weight that...
The Court of Appeal recently granted permission to appeal the County Court decision in Jen and Jamie Ltd v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCC 41, [2025] 7 WLUK 288, in which an appeal against a civil penalty notice for illegally employing two individuals was dismissed. The...
The Home Office has published an updated country policy and information note known as a ‘CPIN’ on Pakistan and sexual orientation and gender identity claims. A new version of the note was published in May 2025, replacing the earlier version from April 2022 and making significant changes to the 2022...
In the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v Khera [2025] EWCA Civ 1571, the Court of Appeal has given guidance on the interpretation of GEN 3.1(1)(b) of Appendix FM of the immigration rules. GEN 3.1(1)(b) is significant for applicants who cannot meet the financial requirements under...
The Court of Appeal has made clear that Part 5A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which sets out the public interest considerations when considering article 8 in a deportation case, applies to decisions on revocation of a deportation order when the applicant is outside the UK. The...
If the Home Office seeks to deport a foreign criminal and certifies their human rights claim, but that foreign criminal successfully challenges the decision to deport (and to certify), what is the immigration status of the foreign criminal afterwards? The Upper Tribunal gives guidance on this question in MM, R...
We are looking for an experienced Immigration Solicitor to join our highly successful, creative, and dynamic immigration team. The Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre has a much-respected Immigration Team. We are a category 1 Legal Aid Immigration provider, and we have considerable experience across the...
The First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), commonly referred to as the FTT or the Immigration Tribunal, is the first level people can go to challenge certain immigration and asylum decisions made by the Home Office. It plays an important role in ensuring that immigration control operates fairly and lawfully,...
Procedural rigour In recent years the courts have highlighted the need for procedural rigour throughout all steps in judicial review proceedings (see, for example, R (Talpada) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 841 at [67]; R (Dolan) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care [2020] EWCA Civ...
The first question to ask when considering pursuing an appeal is whether there is actually a right of appeal to start with. If so, then an appeal can be lodged with the tribunal. If not, the only court challenge available will be an application for judicial review. Usually the decision...
Non EEA appeals Whether or not a non EEA appeal may be brought from within the UK is governed by section 92 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 as amended. Subsection (4) explicitly provides for out of country human rights appeals where a human rights claim is made...
Section 84 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 sets out the grounds (or legal reasons or basis) on which a protection or human rights appeal may be pursued. In short, if the argument at the appeal does not fit within one of the grounds in section 84 then...
The Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Act 2025 received Royal Assent on Monday this week. I wrote up the Bill when first introduced and it has passed unamended since then. The Act was brought in as a response to N3 v Secretary of State for the Home Department...
The Upper Tribunal has allowed a judicial review brought by a Palestinian man after a nightmare scenario where the Home Office withdrew the refusal of his asylum claim the day before his appeal hearing, indicating that refugee status would be granted, only to later to resile from that position following...
In a decision made in April 2024 but only made public now, the High Court quashed decisions made by the Secretary of State of Defence that the claimants were not eligible under the Afghan Response Route because, as a judge and a journalist, they did not work in one of...
The High Court has agreed with the Home Secretary in a judicial review challenging a claimant’s deportation and detention on the grounds that he had an outstanding asylum claim. The High Court held that the implicit withdrawal of the asylum claim was lawful and accepted the Home Secretary’s argument that...
In what was described by the Court of Appeal as “the fourth case to reach this court in the wake of R (Begum) v Special Immigration Appeals Commission [2021] UKSC 7” three appellants have lost their appeal against deprivation of citizenship and a fourth has lost their appeal against exclusion...
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) has published a report following an inspection of the Home Office’s use of age assessments. The report states that “many of the concerns about policy and practice that have been raised for more than a decade remain unanswered”. Background: Home Office...
“They weren’t working, they were just volunteering” is rarely a persuasive defence against a civil penalty. Indeed, it’s positively unpersuasive when those in question were caught voluntarily serving customers, selling alcohol, using the lottery machine to sell tickets and scratch cards, processing parcel deliveries, stacking shelves, and cleaning the store....
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! After several months of uncertainty following December’s pause, a written statement will be made today by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the processing of Syrian protection claims (h/t Jon Featonby). The big news last week was the announcement of...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Another week, another newly surfaced problem with eVisas. Today it was reported that the Security Industry Authority (“an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office”) is not accepting eVisas as official ID for its licence application process. To state the obvious,...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Just spotted this – a challenge has gone in on the pause to settlement applications from Syrian refugees. I have been saying for a while that I think this is where the stronger challenge is with the pause, given the different test at...
Today the government has published the Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill which will mean that a deprivation order removing a person’s British citizenship remains in effect even if the person has successfully appealed, while any further appeals can be or are being made by the Home Secretary....
Asylum lawyers like me tend to focus on just one clause of the Refugee Convention: the definition of a refugee. This is the gateway to formal recognition as a refugee and is therefore of vital importance to any person seeking asylum. From this definition, set out at Article 1A(2) of...
May is over and the immigration white paper has finally been published, so Sonia spends a bit of time at the beginning of this month’s podcast reliving the horrors of that. Andrew covers a very wide range of topics in this episode, from deprivation of citizenship to “self sponsorship” to...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The fallout from the white paper continues, unsurprising given the almost total lack of clarity in it. The Independent Monitoring Authority has had to put out a statement reassuring those with leave under the EUSS. By the looks of immigration message boards, MPs’...
The Supreme Court has upheld a decision of the Court of Appeal, which had agreed with the Special Immigration Appeals Commission’s decision to dismiss an appeal against deprivation of British citizenship and an application for entry clearance by a woman in Syria. The case is U3 v Secretary of State...
The Home Secretary has had an absolute howler in the Upper Tribunal, it is one of those decisions that is worth a read in full if you have the time. It is a successful judicial review challenging a refusal to recognise further submissions as amounting to a fresh claim. This...
The Court of Appeal has considered in Ackom v SSHD [2025] EWCA Civ 537 an appeal by a German national against deportation. The key point of contention was whether Mr Ackom would face ‘very significant obstacles to integration’ upon removal to Germany. The court considered the Kamara test in the...
This month Barry is away and so his colleague Andrew Jones has stepped up and stepped in to co-host with Sonia, and frankly made it all look rather easy. March was a busy one, and Sonia and Andrew rattled through a lot. There were some big decisions in the asylum...
The Court of Appeal has given some guidance on the application of the exceptional assurance policy put in place during the pandemic and has concluded that it could not be relied on by the appellant, notwithstanding the fact that the Home Office had issued him with a letter granting a...
A Somali man who is at risk of harm from the Islamist Al-Shabaab group in his home area is not a refugee or entitled to humanitarian protection because he can reasonably relocate to Mogadishu. This is the decision of the Court of Appeal in ASJ (Somalia) v Secretary of State...
The Court of Appeal has said that Lane J was “plainly correct” in his finding that a pending application to the Supreme Court does not act as an barrier to deportation on the basis that the appeal has not yet been finally determined. The case is R (Geddes) v Secretary...
The Home Secretary has succeeded in an appeal where she argued that those with deportation orders or proceedings were lawfully excluded from a concession allowing certain victims of trafficking to be considered for discretionary leave under the more favourable provisions in place before 30 January 2023. The case is Secretary...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! There were reports of widespread issues with eVisas last week as accounts again seemed to be linked to the wrong identities in yet another data breach. It remains unclear what is causing these issues or when and how it is expected to be resolved. In the meantime, it was...
Claiming asylum is an important human right backed by the United Nations Refugee Convention and recognised by countries around the world. In order to make this right a reality in practice, countries like the UK have set up systems by which people must apply for asylum. In this way, asylum...
