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 ten 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 February podcast is here! We kick off with Sonia briefly summarising the recently published statistics for 2024. There was then a lot to cover on asylum with several case updates and of course the recent Home Office changes to the good character requirements. Barry was thrilled to be able...

10th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The High Court has quashed a decision by the Home Office to refuse a trafficking claim on the grounds that the person had been kidnapped, which the decision maker said could not meet the trafficking definition. The case is R (AAM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025]...

6th March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

In two joined appeals, the Supreme Court has held that a successful challenge to a deprivation decision will mean that British citizenship was retained throughout the period from the date the deprivation order was made until the date of the appeal decision, but the effect of the deprivation order will...

3rd March 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal has returned an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to be determined for a third time after a series of errors made in a First-tier Tribunal decision was not dealt with by the Upper Tribunal. The court was clearly unimpressed, stating that “If the UT had carried...

28th February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The latest quarterly immigration and asylum statistics have been published and nothing in them felt like much of a surprise really. We know that the asylum grant rate has been dropping, the number of health and care visas dropping, student numbers dropping and we have seen these trends continue in...

27th February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

In our latest write up on the people seeking asylum who were on Diego Garcia there was mention of the case of KP, who was excluded from the arrangements to bring most people to the UK as he had criminal convictions, although he had also been recognised as being in...

25th February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Home Secretary has succeeded in an appeal to the Court of Appeal where the First-tier Tribunal’s decision was overturned for a failure to provide sufficient reasons for departing from a country guidance case, only for the Upper Tribunal to then fall into the same error. The case is Secretary...

21st February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

The High Court has dismissed an appeal by the Home Secretary against an award of damages to a refugee in the amount of £98,757.04 in respect of her unlawful detention and breach of article 8 relating to the delay in granting her status. The case is Secretary of State for...

11th February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

There have been some important additions to pages 50 and 51 of the Good Character guidance (a comparison of the new and old versions is here) that have the potential to block a large number of refugees from naturalising as British citizens, effective immediately. This is described in the changes...

11th February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan

Sonia and Barry are back already to celebrate the end of January! There is a brief look back at 2024 and look forward to 2025 which of course now includes the new Bill (seriously what are we calling this thing for short? BSAIB just doesn’t work, as Barry ably demonstrates)....

10th February 2025
BY Sonia Lenegan
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