Last year, the Upper Tribunal refused to recognise my client PK as a refugee, despite acknowledging the risk of a Ukrainian conscript being associated with organisations committing acts contrary to international humanitarian law. This resulted in the dismissal of numerous other appeals of the same nature after the Secretary of...
Someone sentenced to more than four years’ imprisonment is in the most serious category of offender for the purposes of deportation law, no matter how long ago that sentence was, the Court of Appeal has confirmed. The case is OH (Algeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019]...
The High Court has decided that rule 35(2) of the Detention Centre Rules is not unlawful, despite acknowledging the overwhelming evidence that it has failed to protect the welfare of detainees who are at risk of suicide. In R (IS (Bangladesh)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019]...
A grant of refugee status usually involves acceptance that a particular set of circumstances exist which would make it unlawful for a person to be returned to their country of origin. But circumstances change, and this can have a knock-on effect on whether someone continues to qualify as a refugee....
The Court of Appeal has held that the UN Refugee Convention should not be interpreted to include an implied type of derivative refugee status for the family members of refugees. As a result, anyone who was granted refugee status under UK law as the family member of a recognised refugee...
In Savran v Denmark (application no. 57467/15) the European Court of Human Rights has reinforced the importance, in Article 3 medical treatment cases, of the obligation on governments to obtain assurances where there is any doubt as to the impact of removing a seriously ill migrant to another country. The...
In GM (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1630, handed down on Friday, the Court of Appeal provides a helpful summary of where we currently stand with private and family life cases under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. General...
Campaigners have lost a High Court case challenging the “immigration exemption” to personal data rights. The judgment is R (Open Rights Group & the3million) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 2562 (Admin). Paragraph 4, Schedule 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018 says that certain rights...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has found that a child is self-sufficient in EU law even if supported only by the earnings of a parent who is working without permission to do so. The case is C‑93/18 Bajratari. The case involved an Albanian family living in Northern...
The President of the Family Division has decided that the family courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with immigration control, even if they think it is necessary to protect a girl from female genital mutilation (FGM). The most they can do is to ask the Home Office to refrain from...
The Upper Tribunal has finally, some six years after the test was introduced into domestic regulations, taken a good, hard look at the “centre of life” test applied by the Home Office to Surinder Singh cases. For background on the Surinder Singh route see our explainer post here: The Surinder...
In the case of C‑94/18 Chenchooliah the Court of Justice of the European Union returns to the contentious issue of the rights of family members of EU citizens. Family members like to have rights, governments like to be able to remove family members and the judges are called on time...
The Court of Appeal has held that the UK government can be asked to pay expenses where a judicial review has been brought against the Upper Tribunal’s refusal to grant permission to appeal. The test case of Faqiri v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) [2019] EWCA Civ 151 has...
Regulation 33 of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016 (SI 2016/1052) does not wrongfully exclude the ordinary principles applicable in interim relief applications. It does not exclude them at all. So held Mr Justice Murray in R (Yuri Mendes) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC...
O v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1389 is the latest of a series of appeals brought by victims of trafficking against historic convictions. In this case the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) decided to quash a 2008 conviction because the prosecution had not even considered whether bringing O to court...
The ground of appeal in Hameed v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1324 was: It was wrong to find the appellant had made a false representation under paragraph 322(1A) of the Immigration Rules when he had not acted dishonestly. Mr Hameed had applied for a...
Always a worry (but never a surprise) when Court of Appeal judges start off a judgment by saying that the case “has a tortuous procedural history”, is “highly technical” and involves “Byzantine… provisions” of immigration law. Firdaws v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1310 is...
In Secretary of State for the Home Department v MS (Somalia) [2019] EWCA Civ 1345, the Court of Appeal has held that the Home Office can cease refugee status where there has been a change of circumstances in the refugee’s country of origin such that it is possible for them...
The Supreme Court handed down its second judgment in the long-running case of Franco Vomero today. The latest instalment is Secretary of State for the Home Department v Franco Vomero [2019] UKSC 35. The facts Mr Vomero is Italian. He moved to the UK and married a British citizen in...
If a foreign criminal wins their deportation appeal, can the Home Office try and deport them again, even where there has been no further offending? In MA (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1252, the Court of Appeal considered this question and held that...
The First-tier and Upper Tribunals seem to have gone rather badly wrong in the case of MAB (Iraq) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1253, involving an Iraqi doctor who was formerly employed to care for prisoners by Iraqi military intelligence. The Court of...
In immigration law, deadlines are important. They also frequently cause confusion. Sound familiar? That may be because this is how I began a post last month following the Upper Tribunal case of Bhavsar. The Upper Tribunal has now published another case demonstrating the importance of, and confusion caused by, deadlines...
In the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v PG (Jamaica) [2019] EWCA Civ 1213 the Court of Appeal considered the meaning of “unduly harsh” in deportation cases, overturning the decisions of both of the tribunals that had previously heard the appeal. In this post we look...
The Court of Appeal has taken a restrictive approach to the admission of new evidence before the Upper Tribunal that was not available before the First-tier Tribunal. The case is Kabir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1162. In Kabir, the First-tier Tribunal had refused...
The Home Office cannot detain an EU citizen pending deportation without first considering whether detention is “proportionate and necessary” under EU law, the Court of Appeal has said in R (Lauzikas) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1168. Any decision to detain cannot be based...
In MS (appealable decisions; PTA requirements; anonymity : Belgium) [2019] UKUT 216 (IAC), President Lane and Upper Tribunal Judges Gill and Finch provide important guidance on jurisdiction in EEA deportation and Article 8 appeals and the correct procedure for raising “cross appeals” in the Upper Tribunal. I represented the claimant...
In 2016 the Home Office embarked on an attempt to homogenise the application processes for immigration applications made under EU law and those made under UK law. The Upper Tribunal has confirmed in Rehman (EEA Regulations 2016 – specified evidence) [2019] UKUT 195 (IAC) that there are limits to how...
In the recent Court of Appeal case of UT (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1095, Lord Justice Coulson has dealt with some important issues relating to practice and procedure in the tribunal system. UT is a Sri Lankan who came to the...
The High Court has ordered the Home Office to return an asylum seeker to the UK from Uganda because her 2013 asylum appeal hearing was unfair. PN v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 1616 (Admin) is the latest in a series of cases about the consequences...
In immigration law, deadlines are important. They also frequently cause confusion. Bhavsar (late application for PTA: procedure) [2019] UKUT 196 (IAC) is an example of the complications that missing a deadline can cause. In Bhavsar the Upper Tribunal decided that, where an application for permission to appeal is submitted to...
Migrants who have spent ten years in the UK with continuous and lawful leave can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Can leave be “continuous” if it involved short gaps between lawful periods of leave where an applicant has overstayed? This was the question addressed by the Court of...
Detention in a young offender institution has much the same impact on an EU citizen’s enhanced protection against deportation as imprisonment in an adult jail, the Court of Appeal has held. The case is Secretary of State for the Home Department v Viscu [2019] EWCA Civ 1052. EU deportation law...
This week the Court of Appeal quashed the certification of an Albanian asylum claim as “clearly unfounded”. In SP (Albania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 951, the court found that the Home Office had not properly investigated the appellant’s account of being persecuted before...
The Supreme Court has today dismissed the Home Office appeal in the case of Gubeladze [2019] UKSC 31. The judgment affects hundreds of thousands of EU citizens from the so-called Accession Eight (or “A8”) countries that joined the EU in 2004 and means that the United Kingdom unlawfully imposed a...
The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal against deportation of a man sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, in the process providing a good example of the kind of human rights arguments that will sway judges in this notoriously difficult area of law. The court reiterated the high threshold that...
AL (Albania) [2019] EWCA Civ 950 is a new Court of Appeal judgment which says some important things about the approach a tribunal judge should take to factual findings made by another tribunal judge in a related appeal. In this case, AL’s elder brother had claimed asylum on much the...
