Judge Orders Asylum Family To Be Hauled Back To UK Then Deported Again
The Home Office is being forced to bring a family of failed asylum seekers it deported months ago back to Britain and pay them compensation. A judge ordered John Reid’s department to find the bogus refugees and bring them back – even though they are likely to be thrown out again. The bill for the whole exercise will be footed by the taxpayer.
The High Court made the extraordinary ruling because officials failed to follow proper procedures. Immigration staff dismissed the four immigrants’ original claims that they faced persecution in their homeland, which cannot be named because the anonymous family claim to be ‘very scared’ and in hiding. After they were refused asylum their legal appeals were also turned down.
But High Court judge Mrs Justice Black ruled that the Home Office broke the law by locking up and then swiftly deporting the family at Easter because their adult son, who is mentally incapacitated, had lodged a separate asylum claim and still had a final appeal pending in the UK courts.
Splitting the family up was potentially a breach ofmtheir human rights, the judge claimed, and the Home Secretary failed to take that into account.
John Reid has already conceded that the son should not have been deported with his appeal still pending, and has been ordered to pay him £4,000 compensation for his two days in detention.
The judge ruled that the parents and sister were each entitled to the same sum as interim payments, with possible further compensation later.
The ruling is set to cost the taxpayer tens of thousands of pounds, including the damages, the expense of sending officials out to the country to find the family, flying them back to Britain and accommodating them, legal aid for the son’s appeal hearings and in all likelihood the cost of a second deportation operation.
The ruling is a severe blow for Home Office immigration staff, who have struggled to increase the number of failed asylum seekers being sent home from Britain in a bid to cut the massive backlog of cases.
The Home Office has confirmed it was considering how to bring the family back to Britain – a process which could involve awkward negotiations with the government of their home country.
Opposition critics claimed the case exposed a pattern of incompetence within the Home Office.
Tory immigration spokesman Damian Green said: “Another day, another Home Office shambles. This Government has proved itself incapable of deporting people who should not be here, such as preachers of hate, foreign criminals and failed asylum seekers.”
Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, said: “This sounds like a right old muddle with our British laws letting these people of the hook. It is a farcical occurrence with the British taxpayer suffering for it in the end.”
Blair Gibbs of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “For once immigration officials have done what the public want by processing this asylum case quickly and sending the failed claimants back home.
“But now we have to put up with activist judges telling them they can’t repatriate individual family members because of human rights law. The politicians are ultimately to blame for enshrining this human rights law in the first place.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “An unfortunate oversight in this case led to the removal of this family which should not have happened. In such cases consideration is given to bringing persons removed back to the UK and we are taking steps to do so in this case in line with the court judgment and for the outstanding appeal to be heard. If the individual’s appeal is refused, he and his family will be required to leave the UK voluntarily or face enforced removal.”