All Articles: Enforcement
Suspension ordered on removal of Tamil asylum seekers
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 s ...
27th February 2013UKBA refuse to remove overstayers
In asylum cases it is still referred to as The Legacy, as if it were a second rate Spagetti Western. In immigration cases it has the more prosaic title of the ‘migration refusal pool’. The UK Border Agency’s inspectorate has today [u ...
23rd January 2013Last minute judicial reviews: warning
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 Sec ...
14th November 2012News flash on Sri Lanka charter flight
It is Sri Lanka Charter Flight day again today. Just a quick one to say that the UK Border Agency has suddenly withdrawn parts of its new October 2012 Operational Guidance Note (link to old version) on Sri Lanka. Paragraphs 3.3.4 and 13.6 have been ...
23rd October 2012Freedom from Torture: A risk category in itself?
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 governm ...
17th September 2012What is the magic number?
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 ...
17th September 2012Charter flight(s): materials in support of claims against removals
Below is a list of materials which can be used in connection/in support of claims against decisions to remove on the charter flight(s) bound for Sri Lanka next week. The list will be updated as and when relevant materials are published and/or circul ...
15th September 2012Stand-by group for charter flight cases
There are we understand two charter flights bound to Sri Lanka on the 19 and 20 September 2012. If detainees do not have solicitors then contact Janani Jananayagam from TAG [Tamils Against Genocide] who can be contacted on 07801 999130. She will dir ...
14th September 2012Country Guidance cases reviewed
In the jurisprudential equivalent of Easyjet and Ryanair flights simultaneously arriving at Stansted from Alicante, Malaga AND Lanzarote, a number of important cases have just been deposited in the luggage carousel that is BAILII. School is now out an ...
16th July 2012Exceptional circumstances now more… exceptional
As expected, the obscure but important Chapter 53 of the Enforcement Instructions and Guidance (‘Extenuating Circumstances’) has been amended following on from the scrapping of paragraph 395C of the Immigration Rules. The new text is bas ...
2nd March 2012Tamil returnee claims torture in Sri Lanka
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 off ...
27th February 2012New risk factor in Sri Lankan cases
The Swiss Federal Administrative Court has addressed risk to Sri Lankan Tamils facing enforced removal in a new judgment recently reported by UNHCR. The judgment is in French but the UNHCR summary in English states as follows: [P]olitical opponents, c ...
12th December 2011Charter flight to Sri Lanka 15 December 2011
EDIT 14/12/11: Treasury Solicitor letter to High Court regarding charter flight can be found here. Question: Who said this? We will continue to investigate any credible and relevant allegations and review our policy in light of any findings. Answer: ...
11th December 2011Family return policy unlawful
NA (Iran) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 1172 This case concerned a challenge to the decision of the SSHD to remove the Claimant, and her infant daughter, to Latvia on Third Country grounds. The challenge failed but the C ...
31st October 2011Carpet Karaoke training video
Amnesty International have put together a training video for potential recruits to the private security firms contracted to carry out forced removals. It is well worth a watch. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vldHz2ZJoxY&w=560&h=349] T ...
15th July 2011Amnesty campaign on forced removals
Amnesty International has launched a campaign to change the way that the UK Border Agency conducts forced removals. The practices used by the private security contractors who do the dirty work for the Border Agency was highlighted earlier this year by ...
8th July 2011Critical HM Inspector of Prisons reports published
HM Inspectorate of Prisons yesterday published two reports based on unannounced inspections of the short term immigration holding facilities at Heathrow Terminals 3 and 4 (Terminal 3 report here and Terminal 4 report here). The reports are broadly pos ...
7th July 2011More on breach of asylum confidentiality
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 ...
14th June 2011Breach of confidentiality in Sri Lankan asylum return
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 ...
10th June 2011Secret race discrimination
In an earlier post I highlighted the new Ministerial Authorisation permitting race discrimination by immigration officials. This followed on from the exposure of discrimination against Pakistanis purely on the basis of their nationality by the Chief I ...
31st May 2011New Family Returns Process
The Home Office has introduced a new way of dealing with the return of families from the UK. It is called the ‘family return process’. If it is faithfully implemented by staff on the ground (a big ‘if’), it represents a massive ...
10th March 2011Refusal with no right of appeal revisited
This is a problem that has been addressed previously on the blog: what can be done when a person makes an immigration application but for technical legal reasons is not granted a right of appeal to the tribunal? See this previous post. The problem has ...
28th February 2011Returns to Greece unlawful, says Strasbourg
The European Court of Human Rights has just held that it is unlawful to send asylum seekers to Greece under what is widely known as the ‘Dublin II’ Regulation for their asylum claims to be processed there. The case is MSS v Greece and Belg ...
21st January 2011Round up
There have been two big developments in the last week or so: the ‘ending’ of child detention and the successful challenge to the temporary mad cap (as I link to think of it). On child detention, Alan Travis of The Guardian was clearly well ...
21st December 2010Removals to Greece suspended
The Government has confirmed that removals to Greece under the Dublin II Regulation have been suspended pending the outcome of the test case. This comes following a number of recent news items on the calamity that is the Greek asylum ‘systemR ...
22nd September 2010No notice removals case
R (on the application of Medical Justice) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWHC 1925 (Admin) should be a wake up call to civil servants at UKBA and Ministers in the new Government. The High Court declared unlawful the Home Office po ...
30th July 2010More big cases
I can’t keep up! If things ever quieten down I’ll do a few more weighty analysis posts but in the meantime these alerter ones must suffice. Firstly, the Medical Justice challenge to no-notice removals has succeeded: R (on the application ...
27th July 2010No notice removals suspended
No-notice removals have been suspended following a legal challenge brought by Medical Justice. The no-notice policy has been covered here previously and was the subject of a damning judgment by Mr Justice Collins when two children were taken from fo ...
23rd May 2010Same day removals condemned
Further to my alerter post on this last month, the judgment is now available in the damning Third Country removals case on children. It is called R (on the application of T) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWHC 435 (Admin). As exp ...
12th March 2010New removals policy
UKBA have changed their removals policy, and not in a nice way. The announcement letter to stakeholders is available here and does not really tell half the story. In essence, the 72 hour notice period for removals is to be waived in a wide range of c ...
21st December 2009Yet more unlawfulness
The Government’s disregard for the rule of law grows more and more alarming. I confine myself on this blog to immigration and asylum law, perhaps the most blatant area of disregard for the rule of law, but other examples abound in the news at th ...
16th March 2009