I was delighted last week to receive an email from Professor John Fitzpatrick of Kent Law School informing me that AR of WM (DRC) and AR (Afghanistan) [2006] EWCA Civ 1495 (the leading case on fresh asylum claims) fame has been granted a residence permit. Here is how it all...
At 2pm today a group of injunction applications for Tamils facing removal to Sri Lanka by charter flight on 28 February 2013 were heard before Mr Justice Wilkie and Upper Tribunal Judge Gleeson. A suspension on the removal of all Tamil failed asylum seekers was ordered (copy here). The cases...
The President of the Queens Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, has issued a dire warning to solicitors applying for last minute judicial reviews and injunctions in immigration cases. The comments come in the case of R (on the application of Hamid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012]...
Human Rights Watch and a proxy terror front group -Freedom from Torture, clamored that the flights should be suspended because some ‘ethnic’ Tamils were subjected to cruel treatment in the island nation. This is what the Sri Lankan government’s own Ministry of Defence has to say about the charity Freedom...
UPDATE: the order made by the Upper Tribunal is now available. A Tamil failed asylum seeker forcibly returned from the United Kingdom to Sri Lanka on 21 February 2012 has claimed that he was tortured on arrival. He was later interviewed by British officials. A medical examination arranged by the...
Further to Shivani’s last post on this, the numbers facing removal on the charter flight to Sri Lanka are lower than originally thought, although it still constitutes a mass removal. Evidence of other breaches of confidentiality in Sri Lankan asylum cases is emerging. These could be isolated mistakes or there...
An investigation is required as a matter of extreme urgency into an accepted breach of confidentiality in respect of the case of a Sri Lankan Tamil woman detained by the UKBA and pending removal to Sri Lanka on 16 June 2011. It is important to stress that UKBA do not...
The short answer is that we do not know. But it is possible to make some informed guesses. In this post I try to do just that, based on a Twitter thread from a few days ago and some feedback from that. Page contentsEvidence on refugee decision-makingDeterrence does not workIs...
The UK-Rwanda memorandum of understanding on asylum processing is now available. It sets out the terms of the agreement between the countries at a high level but provides some insight into how this scheme is supposed to work. Before removal Importantly, the UK has committed to undertaking an “initial screening”...
The statement of changes was in some ways rather anticlimactic when it comes to work-based immigration. The last two years have seen a series of reports and policy statements setting out the government’s plans for the “new” Points-Based Immigration System. The major changes therefore come as no great surprise. Despite...
For work-based immigration, last week’s statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was in many ways rather anticlimactic. The last two years have seen a series of reports and policy statements setting out the government’s plans for a ‘new’ Points-Based Immigration System. The major changes therefore come as no great...
Page contentsFree Movement and Criminal LawIntroductionDeporting EU citizens: criminal law as a limit to protection against expulsion and exclusionChecking EU citizens’ criminal records: the EU criminal record exchange systemBringing to justice individuals fleeing prosecution or custody: the European Arrest Warrant systemPreventing the entry of individuals deemed to pose security threats:...
There is general discretion to take responsibility for a human rights claim in Article 17 of Dublin 3: 1. By way of derogation from Article 3(1), each Member State may decide to examine an application for international protection lodged with it by a third-country national or a stateless person, even...
Mr Justice Bernard McCloskey has been appointed the new President of the Upper Tribunal’s Immigration and Asylum Chamber. His term begins on 1 October 2013 at the conclusion of Mr Justice Nicholas Blake’s three year term of office. First of all, a few words on the term of Mr Justice...
How many torture claims from returnees to Sri Lanka are necessary before the UKBA and the Courts decide that the time has come for review? This graph (click link to see further details) attempts to collate the data from recent reports and compare it against a broad pattern of removals...
There have been two important developments on returns to Iraq in the last week. The first is that an unknown number of Iraqis appear to have been removed on a specially chartered flight on 27 March. According to the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees and Stop Deportations to Iraq, there...
