Author: Sonia Lenegan

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Sonia Lenegan

Sonia Lenegan is an experienced immigration, asylum and public law solicitor. She has been practising for over fifteen years and was previously legal director at the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association and legal and policy director at Rainbow Migration. Sonia is the Editor of Free Movement.

The Secretaries of State for Defence, the Home Office and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs have succeeded in an appeal against three orders made by the High Court in litigation arising from the Afghan data breach which came to light last year after the superinjunction was lifted. Two of the...

23rd January 2026
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

21st January 2026
BY Sonia Lenegan

Unless and until a person has been notified that a decision has been made to make a deportation order against them, they are not liable to removal for the purpose of section 259 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The importance of that point in this case was that it...

20th January 2026
BY Sonia Lenegan

That’s officially a wrap on 2025, as Sonia and Barry run through December’s various happenings, including the final statement of changes for the year and our latest resources on the earned settlement proposals. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act is now in force and the latest tribunal statistics show...

14th January 2026
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal has overturned a costs order made by the Upper Tribunal in which no costs were awarded in a case where the Home Office had refused a visit visa four times and a judicial review had been lodged challenging the failure to make a new decision by...

5th January 2026
BY Sonia Lenegan

The mantra of “safe and legal routes” is regularly repeated by the government when justifying increasingly draconian legislation in an attempt to prevent refugees from travelling to the UK under their own steam. The argument is that refugees should use these safe and legal routes instead of arriving in small...

24th December 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Panicking about a Christmas present for the human rights lawyer in your life? Landmark Chambers have you covered with the excellent “The Law and Practice of Human Rights”. This is the first (presumably of many) edition and is a huge achievement that was turned around in an impressively quick period...

19th December 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

This is one of those real train wrecks from the Home Office, where you may want to make yourself a large cup of coffee and read through the whole judgment. It features a person being wrongly told by the Home Office to make a No Time Limit application, followed by...

18th December 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Migration Advisory Committee is clearing its desk ahead of the holiday break, publishing not one but two reports today. The first is the review of the salary requirements for work visas, where the committee has recommended keeping the general threshold at £41,700 and that a single new entrant rate...

17th December 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The High Court has ordered the Home Secretary to grant indefinite leave to remain to a man who has held discretionary leave to remain for 15 years, first granted under the pre-July 2012 policy. The Home Secretary had tried to rely on a conviction that pre-dated the first grant of...

12th December 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan
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