Yahoo
Within 24 hours of more than 170 MPs and peers writing to the Prime Minister, calling for him to halt a flight deporting 50 people to Jamaica, a plane leaves UK despite a court ruling and a warning of the “unacceptable risk” of removing anyone with a potential Windrush claim.
We are covering previous opinion pieces and a timeline of news stories on the latest scandalous and unprecedented racist actions of the UK government — and details of the court hearings — by including five stories in the same post.
_____________________________________________
More than 170 MPs and peers back call to halt Jamaica deportation flight amid Windrush warning
The Home Office has claimed that the flight, due to depart on Tuesday, is “specifically for removing foreign criminals”.
By Eleanor Langford
Published on Politics Home, Feb 10, 2020
_____________________________________________
The Home Office has claimed that the flight, due to depart on Tuesday, is “specifically for removing foreign criminals”.
But in a letter to Boris Johnson, organised by Labour MP Nadia Whittome, MPs have warned of the “unacceptable risk” of removing anyone with a potential Windrush claim.
Ms Whittome wrote: “The fact is that many of the individuals in question have lived in the UK since they were children and at least 41 British children are now at risk of losing their fathers through this charter flight.
“The Government risks repeating the mistakes of the Windrush scandal unless it cancels this flight and others like it until the Windrush Lessons Learned Review has been published and its recommendations implemented.”
The 2018 Windrush scandal came after more than 80 Commonwealth citizens were deported despite having a legal right to remain in the UK.
A review recommended that deportations of foreign-born offenders, particularly those who came to the UK as children, should be reconsidered, according to a leaked draft of the report.
But responding to Ms Whittome in the Commons, Boris Johnson said: “The people of this country will think it right to send back foreign national offenders.”
Shadow Immigration Minister Bell Ribeiro-Addy said such mass deportation flights were “the most brutal and inhuman way to remove people from this country”.
She added: “It often lacks due process, has little regard for deportees safety, and even less for their right to a family life.
“Both the Home Office and the Prime Minister do not appear to even have the correct information on those due on the flight.
“We are calling on the Government to halt all charter flight deportations until it publishes its Windrush lessons learned review. After the Windrush scandal, we expect better. But this Government will stop at nothing to maintain its hostile environment.
_____________________________________________
Appeal court gives 11th-hour reprieve to detainees due to be sent to Jamaica
Court of appeal orders Home Office not to remove anyone scheduled to be deported from two detention centres on 6.30am flight
By Diane Taylor
Published on The Guardian, Feb 11, 2020
_____________________________________________
A group of about 50 people due to be deported to Jamaica on Tuesday morning won a last-minute reprieve on Monday night following an emergency ruling by the court of appeal.
The court ordered the Home Office not to remove anyone scheduled to be deported from two detention centres near Heathrow on the 6.30am flight to Jamaica – “unless satisfied [they] had access to a functioning, non-O2 sim card on or before 3 February”.
The action was brought because there has been a problem with the O2 phone network in the Heathrow detention centres since last month, meaning many detainees had been unable to exercise their legal right to contact their lawyers.
The Home Office tried to have the decision overturned but that attempt failed just before 1am on Tuesday morning.
Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, which brought the legal challenge, said: “We are delighted with this landmark decision which is a victory for access to justice, fairness and the rule of law.
“On the basis of this order from our court of appeal, we do not believe that anyone currently detained at the Heathrow detention centres can be removed on [Tuesday’s] flight. We understand that this will apply to at least 56 people.”
Lawyer Toufique Hossain, who brought the case for Detention Action, said: “For weeks now detainees’ complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Their removal looms large, hours away and yet again it takes judicial intervention to make the Home Office take basic, humane and fair steps to allow people to enjoy their constitutional right to access justice.”
The Home Office had argued that the flight was “specifically for deporting foreign national offenders”, adding that “those detained for removal include people convicted of manslaughter, rape, violent crime and dealing Class A drugs”.
The 11th-hour reprieve came as a result of one of two actions to try to halt the flight. Earlier a high court judge rejected an application from solicitors on behalf of 13 Jamaican-born men due to be put on the flight.
The lawyers argued that the home secretary, Priti Patel, had acted unlawfully by forcing the men on to the plane, had breached human rights legislation and denied them adequate access to legal advice.
Their application to the high court to halt the flight added that the Home Office’s announcements in the media and in parliament about the charter flight would make the men being deported a “public spectacle” in Jamaica, and place them at risk.
The appeal court has been asked to consider that high court ruling, and was expected to make another out of hours ruling on that overnight.
Some individuals due to fly have won the right to stay in the UK for the time being, after a separate application to the upper tribunal of the immigration chamber. They include Akeem Finlay, whose solicitor Naga Kandiah welcomed the decision, but condemned the Home Office’s plan to deport so many men who would leave partners and children behind.
“It seems there is an inherent disregard for the integrity of the family unit and the welfare of children,” he said.
Rishi Sunak, the chief secretary to the Treasury, said those being forcibly removed had committed “very serious offences”. But 13 detainees due to fly today described a range of less serious offences they had committed.
More than 150 cross-party MPs had called on Boris Johnson to halt the flight, citing a range of concerns.
Hossain said many of the people on the flight had lived in the UK for most of their lives and that there needed to be a proper overview and consideration given to how the Home Office approached such individuals.
Sankey said: “Our information indicates that most have been convicted of drugs-related offences – often only once – and several have been groomed into county lines operations.”
The Home Office has not responded to recommendations from the former prisons ombudsman Stephen Shaw or to a leak from the Windrush Lessons Learned review, which suggested that foreign national offenders who had lived in the UK for most of their lives should not face automatic deportation.
Last year the Guardian revealed that at least five men had been murdered after their deportation to Jamaica. One of the five was Dewayne Robinson, 37.
It has emerged that Robinson was the cousin of Akeem Finlay, 30, one of those who is facing enforced return to Jamaica on Tuesday after a GBH conviction. Finlay came to the UK at the age of 10.
Months before Robinson’s murder on 4 March 2018 after his deportation from the UK, another of Finlay’s cousins was murdered. “The men involved in the murders of my cousins have warned our family not to return to Jamaica or we will be murdered too,” said Finlay.
Jamaica deportation: Home Office flight leaves UK despite court ruling
A Home Office flight deporting convicted offenders to Jamaica has left the UK, despite a last-minute legal challenge.
Published on The BBC, Feb 11, 2020
_____________________________________________
A Home Office flight deporting convicted offenders to Jamaica has left the UK, despite a last-minute legal challenge.
Downing Street said 17 people were deported, but 25 others had been stopped because of the court order.
The court ruling came on Monday night after concerns that some detainees may not have had access to legal advice.
One woman, whose husband was taken off the flight, said there was confusion over what would happen next.
All of those being deported are Jamaican nationals who have been convicted of criminal offences and given prison sentences of 12 months or more.
In a statement, the prime minister’s spokesman said “we bitterly regret” the court decision that stopped the 25 people from leaving, and will urgently appeal.
“The offences which these people were responsible for include one manslaughter, one firearms offence, seven violent offences, two which are in the category of rape or sexual offences and 14 drugs offences,” the spokesman said.
He added: “We make no apology whatsoever for seeking to remove serious foreign national offenders.”
On Monday, a Court of Appeal judge ruled the government should not deport detainees from Colnbrooke and Harmondsworth detention centres, near Heathrow, after lawyers argued mobile phone signal problems meant some of the detainees could not get legal advice.
The ruling said the government must not deport anyone from those centres unless they had access to a functioning, non-O2 Sim card on or before 3 February.
‘Moral debate’
There had been calls for the government to suspend the flight until a report on the Windrush scandal has been published.
A leaked draft of the report said the government should consider ending the deportation of foreign-born offenders who came to the UK as children.
Campaigners argued that most of the detainees due to be deported had spent the majority of their lives in Britain.
Bella Sankey, director of charity Detention Action, told the BBC News Channel: “In these cases where people have been here for a long time and are to all intents and purposes British, by deporting individuals like that you are doubly punishing them.
“For many of these individuals deportation is a much harsher sentence than the time they’ve already served. Imagine being forever banished from the country you grew up in, unable to visit all of your close family and friends.”
Immigration lawyer Jacqueline Mckenzie told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme: “There needs to be a moral debate about this because it cannot be right that we are picking up people in their 30s who arrived at two… and sending them to countries that they don’t know, leaving behind all their family.”
Tottenham MP David Lammy said it was an “outrage” that the flight had departed.
“The government wants to give the impression that everyone who was deported was a hardened violent criminal, but the reality is many of those who were scheduled to be deported had committed non-violent, one-time drugs offences.
“The lessons from Windrush have not been learned. Lives are being ruined because we don’t remember our history.”
Tonique Kerr said her husband, Reshawn Davis, who has been in the UK for 20 years, was among those told on Monday that he would not be on the flight.
“We don’t know what’s happening,” she told the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme.
Ms Kerr said her husband had been sentenced to 14 months in prison – although only served two months – under the controversial joint enterprise law, after two mobile phones were stolen and he was “just there when it happened”.
“He came [to the UK] when he was 11,” she said. “He’s not actually been back since he’s come to this country. He’s now 30, he’s spent most of his life here.”
Shabana Mahmood MP said one of her constituents had also been taken off the flight.
“He actually served in the British Armed Forces,” she said. “He did two tours of Afghanistan, when he came back he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
“He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and that sort of began the deterioration of his mental health, after which he was convicted for GBH.
“His mental health has continued to deteriorate and his argument has always been: he’s served this country, he hasn’t had help for the PTSD he picked up as a serving soldier for our country.
“So it really goes to the heart of our notions of what it is to be a citizen.”
The flight had been due to leave for Kingston at 6:30 GMT on Tuesday.
Chancellor Sajid Javid said no-one protected by the court ruling was on the flight.
“It is absolutely right that when they have served their sentence that we send them out of the country,” Mr Javid told BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday morning.
“They are not British nationals, they are not members of the Windrush generation, they are all foreign national offenders.”
On Tuesday, the Home Office said: “Today 17 serious foreign criminals were deported from the UK. They were convicted of rape, violent crimes and drug offences and had a combined sentence length of 75 years, as well as a life sentence.
“We make no apology whatsoever for seeking to remove dangerous foreign criminals.
“We will be urgently pursuing the removal of those who were prevented from boarding the flight due to a legal challenge over a mobile network failure.”
And the PM’s spokesman said: “The legal process for removing these offenders – which has included repeated appeals and judicial reviews – has already cost the British public tens of thousands of pounds.
“The taxpayer will now be left with an even bigger bill and the prospect of convicts who are considered to pose a threat to the UK being granted bail while this matter is resolved.”
_____________________________________________
Two years after Windrush, we’re deporting people who’ve only known Britain as home
The government is ignoring its own review and ripping apart families, showing how little regard it has for the lives it ruins
By David Lammy
Published on The Guardian, Feb 10, 2020
_____________________________________________
Over the phone last Thursday I spoke to Tayjay, a 24-year-old man being held in Colnbrook detention centre. Tayjay has lived in the UK since he was five, as was obvious when I heard his strong London accent. His life is deeply entwined with his family, all of whom live in the UK. Most days, he takes his younger brother to school.
Tayjay told me he was the victim of county lines grooming and compelled to carry drugs. This resulted in a single drugs-related offence and a 15-month conviction, for which he served seven months in 2015, when he was 19. Since he was released five years ago, despite never reoffending, Tayjay has been terrified of being deported. He has only visited Jamaica once before and said even then he found it “too hot” and “wanted to come home”.
Like Tayjay, many of those scheduled to be deported on tomorrow’s charter flight to Jamaica are more British than they are Jamaican. It is impossible to get a complete picture of who will be in the final 50, as there is no transparency from the Home Office, but I know of at least five people who arrived in the UK as children as young as two, five, seven and 11. I know of one man who was born in the UK to a Windrush generation mum. Six detainees had indefinite leave to remain in the UK – and a number of them could have received British citizenship as children but were unable to afford the high fees.
If this flight goes ahead, at least 41 British children will be deprived of their fathers. What problems will this create in their own lives? And who exactly is splitting up families supposed to help?
Every single one of the men has already served the sentence the judge deemed appropriate for their crime. Each has endured additional time in immigration detention centres. And now these men will receive a third punishment – complete ostracisation from their communities – which in some cases could become a death sentence. The Guardian revealed that at least five people had been killed after being deported to Jamaica since the Windrush scandal was exposed.
Regardless of criminal convictions, it is a breach of human rights legislation to deport individuals to a country where their lives could be in serious danger.
The echoes of Windrush are deafening, just two years after this national scandal was exposed. The Home Office admitted that it wrongly deported or detained at least 164 black British citizens and probably many more. At least 11 of them died on the streets of foreign countries where they were deported.
There are more than 5,000 cases of individuals alleging that they were in some way seriously harmed – made homeless, jobless, left destitute and denied access to public services – by the government that was supposed to protect them.
After the government admitted its crimes against these British citizens in 2018, it rightly suspended deportation flights to the Caribbean and set up an independent review, headed by Wendy Williams, to ensure lessons were learned. The Windrush Lessons Learned review was first due to be published on 31 March last year. It was then delayed to September. It still hasn’t appeared.
How can we be confident the Home Office is not repeating the same mistakes before it has published, let alone implemented, its own review? All it took was two years of lying low, and now the “deport first, ask questions later” policy has returned.
Last week I leaked part of a draft of the Windrush Lessons Learned review because it confirmed my worst fears.
Boris Johnson’s government is suppressing its own independent review so it can knowingly and intentionally defy the recommendations that are made within it. In it, Wendy Williams says the government should “review its policy and approach to FNOs [foreign national offenders], if necessary through primary legislation”. These include considering “ending all deportation of FNOs where they arrived in the UK as children” and only using deportation in “the most severe cases”. When I asked a question about the flight in parliament today, the Home Office minister Kevin Foster said I was “losing the plot”, and the Tory MP Suella Braverman accused me of “shrill virtue signalling”.
There should be no more deportation flights until the Windrush Lessons Learned review is published and its recommendations implemented. I accept there may be some cases where the most severe violent criminals, who came to the UK as adults, should face the prospect of deportation. However, to enforce this policy on those who have lived in the UK since they were children, as well as those who have committed one-off drugs offences, is wildly disproportionate and cruel.
The government’s decision to ignore the recommendations shows it is not sorry. It has little regard for the lives it has ruined, and will keep making the same mistakes. Much of this is because it still fails to confront the legacy of empire. The UK and Caribbean are entwined because the British empire enslaved black Africans and brought them there in shackles on slave ships. Lives are being ruined because we don’t remember our history.
• David Lammy is the Labour MP for Tottenham
______________________________________________
The Windrush scandal will continue to haunt the conservative Government
There are many lessons to be learned from how poorly our own citizens have been treated. We still do not know the extent to which people have been wrongly detained for immigration reasons, and the Government has provided no answers on how many people have been bullied or threatened into so-called voluntary removals.
By Diane Abbott
Published on Politics First, Sept 11, 2018
______________________________________________
There are many lessons to be learned from how poorly our own citizens have been treated. We still do not know the extent to which people have been wrongly detained for immigration reasons, and the Government has provided no answers on how many people have been bullied or threatened into so-called voluntary removals.
There has been much discussion over the Windrush generation and the valuable contribution they have made to lives of people in the UK – all in response to a Commonwealth recruitment call from the ‘mother country’. But the Government has never understood what that means, or never translated that into policy.The Windrush generation came here to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. They came with an array of skills and filled staff shortages in many areas including schools and transport, as well as a newly formed National Health Service. It was clear who our friends were, and we still recognise the valuable contribution people from other countries make to our society and economy.
The Tories now admit that British citizens have been excluded after returning from overseas trips; maybe a wedding, a funeral or family holiday. Windrush citizens have died waiting for confirmation that they were here legally.
There have been repeated failures to protect Windrush citizens that could have been avoided. Home Office delays have caused distress for those waiting for decisions on visa applications, exacerbated by the burden of proof relying on them to prove that they are here legally, rather than the state to prove that they are not.
I, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell all warned before the 2014 Immigration Act that people would be falsely accused of being illegal immigrants because of their names, accents and the colour of their skin. That is exactly what has happened.
We should be also be clear that the entire Windrush generation is all those from the whole Commonwealth, not solely the Caribbean, who came here before 1973.
Furthermore, the Windrush scandal has brought to wider attention the failure of government policy when it comes to the detention of migrants.
When I was an MP in the 1990s, detention centres were introduced, and we were told in parliament that there would be no need for strict rules of due process because no person would be detained longer than 28 days in detention centres. They were never meant to be prisons sentences where people are locked up for months, even years on end.
As long as indefinite detention continues, this will cause real suffering to thousands of people. The time has come for real change and the demand for indefinite detentions to end.
Labour believes that the front line staff of government agencies should carry out their defined roles. Through the hostile environment approach that we have seen, teachers, health workers, employers and landlords turned into snoops and ineffective and internal border guards.
The Windrush scandal goes right to the very heart of Theresa May’s hostile environment policy; it was not accidental; rather, it is a direct consequence of policies not just made to make migrants feel unwelcome, but to actively ruin the lives of people that we have relied on. The next Labour Government will repeal those parts of the policy that were introduced to support the hostile environment.
Theresa May has had to apologise for the implications of the draconian 2014 Immigration Act – the legal underpinning to the hostile environment policy. Labour, in government, will be committed to ending the hostile policies and overturning the act that supports them.
If Windrush teaches us anything, if there is one lesson to learn, it is that we need to value migrants and recognise that migration adds to our prosperity. Unless and until we come to that realisation, I fear we will not make the progress we could. The Tories have made a mess of immigration which only Labour can fix.