This was the central question which arose in the context of an unlawful detention claim, initially dismissed by the High Court in Johnson v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 3120 (KB) and then again in the recently reported appeal in Johnson v Secretary of State for...
Deportation proceedings pit the rights of the individual against those of the state, appointed guardian of the public interest. And as very clearly stated in primary legislation, the deportation of foreign criminals is in the public interest. The law in this area is rent through with politics, shifting relentlessly with...
The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal against the deportation of a Jamaican man who arrived in the UK aged ten. The case is SC (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 15. The judgment covers the application of the concept of internal relocation to risk of...
Are you a “foreign criminal” if you were a British citizen when convicted and sentenced, but you’ve lost that citizenship by the time the Home Office decides to deport you? Yes, said the Court of Appeal in Zulfiqar v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 492,...
Where a foreign national criminal is sentenced to more than four years in prison they will only succeed in challenging deportation where they can demonstrate “very compelling circumstances”. Home Office guidance Unsurprisingly, Home Office guidance to caseworkers on deportation cases (Criminality: Article 8 ECHR cases) suggests that the meaning of this...
The second set of public interest considerations, set out at section 117(C), applies only in deportation cases involving “foreign criminals”. A foreign criminal is defined in section 117D(2) as a person who: (a) has been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least 12 months, (b) has been convicted...
A 38-year-old man born in the UK without British citizenship cannot be deported to a country he has never even been to, the Upper Tribunal has decided. The case is Akinyemi v Secretary of State for the Home Department (unreported, DA/00574/2014). Remi Akinyemi was born in the UK in 1983....
The Guardian reports that the Home Office has agreed with Jamaica not to deport Jamaican citizens who arrived in the UK under the age of 12. The scope of the reported agreement is unclear: it arises in the context of an upcoming deportation flight to Jamaica, scheduled for 2 December...
A key tenet of UK deportation law is that British nationals cannot be deported: section 3(5) of the Immigration Act 1971. And yet, Sajid Zulfiqar, a man born British in the UK, will, barring any further appeals, be deported to the land of his fathers: Zulfiqar (‘Foreign criminal’ : British...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in Akinyemi v SSHD (No 2) [2019] EWCA Civ 2098, a long-running appeal concerning the deportation of a man who was born in the UK in 1983, and has never left. In reversing (again) the decision of the Upper Tribunal to dismiss Mr...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in CI (Nigeria) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 2027, providing further guidance on the law relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and in particular on the meaning in section 117C(4) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 of “lawful residence”, “social...
The Upper Tribunal judgment in MS (British citizenship; EEA appeals) Belgium [2019] UKUT 356 (IAC) confirms that certain EU citizen children in the UK can be considered lawfully resident for the purposes of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if they (or their EU citizen parents...
We have already examined the “statutory considerations” to which judges must have regard set out in Part 5A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. These are not the only considerations to which the Home Office or a judge must have regard when deciding a deportation case, however. Recap...
In the wide-ranging and somewhat sorry case of El Gazzaz v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 532 the Court of Appeal has confirmed the strength of the presumption in favour of deporting foreign criminals. Criminal convictions and mental ill-health Sherif El Gazzaz, an Egyptian national,...
A further layer of complexity was added to deportation cases by the Immigration Act 2014, which inserted a new Part 5A into the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. This sets out statutory considerations in deportation cases which must be considered by a tribunal or judge. Oddly, the Secretary of State...
What is the hostile environment? The “hostile environment” for migrants is a package of measures designed to make life so difficult for individuals without permission to remain that they will not seek to enter the UK to begin with or if already present will leave voluntarily. It is inextricably linked...
Well, that did not take long. The Court of Appeal has in the case of NE-A (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 239 decided that the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment in Hesham Ali [2016] UKSC 60 is confined to cases in which the Immigration...
The case of Akinyemi v SSHD [2017] EWCA Civ 236 concerns the deportation of a man born and raised in the United Kingdom, a country he has never left. It provides valuable guidance on the meaning of the word ‘unlawful’ within the context of deportation provisions introduced by the Immigration...
