Home Office ministers lose deportation fight with Portuguese immigrant

Home Office ministers have lost a deportation fight with a Portuguese immigrant given a custodial sentence when he was a teenager.

Immigration officials said Luis Lopes’s deportation was justified on public security grounds.

Mr Lopes, who is in his twenties and moved to Britain with his family when a child, had successfully challenged that decision at an immigration tribunal.

A tribunal judge was not satisfied that he presented a “sufficiently serious threat” to justify deportation.

Three appeal judges have backed that tribunal judge’s decision after analysing evidence at a Court of Appeal hearing in London.

They outlined detail of the case in a ruling published on Tuesday.

Judges said Mr Lopes had committed a number of offences of violence when aged 16.

He had admitted wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and wounding and been handed a four-year youth detention sentence.

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