Author: Sonia Lenegan

Picture of Sonia Lenegan

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 Commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory has unsuccessfully appealed a grant of bail allowing the small group of people seeking asylum on Diego Garcia to access certain parts of the island. The case is The Commissioner v The King (on the application of VT & Ors) (No. 3)...

29th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

A challenge to the lack of legal aid for young people who have turned 18 since first claiming asylum to have a legal representative attend their asylum interview has been dismissed by the High Court. The case is R (Alhasan) v Director of Legal Aid Casework & Anor [2024] EWHC...

27th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The latest quarterly statistics show little movement on the asylum backlog, which was to be expected given the Home Office was not making many decisions due to the Illegal Migration Act. Following restrictions to the ability of people to bring their immediate family to the UK with them, we have...

22nd August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Upper Tribunal has said that where family life exists, the article 8 rights of family members overseas need to be taken into account and it is wrong to focus only on the rights of the UK based sponsor. Following on from that, the refusal to grant entry clearance to...

22nd August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Upper Tribunal has held that an Afghan man who was living in Ukraine at the time of the Russian invasion and who wanted to come and join his brother in the UK was lawfully refused a grant of entry clearance under the Ukraine schemes. The case is R (on...

21st August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The latest modern slavery statistics show that the record low grant rate noted in the previous update have continued in the period April to June 2024, with positive decisions made by the immigration enforcement competent authority at around 20% for both stages of the trafficking identification process. Background: how does...

19th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Upper Tribunal has held that the Home Office guidance on Zambrano carers is wrong to require decision makers to assess whether a person may be able to make an application with a “realistic prospect” of succeeding under Appendix FM. This was the same conclusion reached by the High Court...

14th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Home Office has been ordered to disclose data on the numbers of emergency travel documents issued for Eritrea and Somalia, and how long it took for those documents to be issued, after refusing to provide the information in response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act...

12th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

It’s August and Colin is away on holiday so Sonia was joined by a very special guest, Barry O’Leary, for the July roundup. Sonia and Barry discussed the end of the Rwanda scheme and the resumed processing of asylum cases, things not to do when carrying out an asylum backlog...

9th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission to dismiss an appeal against the deprivation of British citizenship of a man who travelled to Syria and fought with a group aligned to Al-Qaeda. The case is B4 v Secretary of State for the Home...

7th August 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan