In Oluponle v Home Office [2023] EWHC 3188 (KB), the claimant was awarded £20,000 for 60 days’ false imprisonment. Several helpful comments were made on various Home Office failings during the detention process. Background The claimant was a Nigerian national who had been caught trying to fly to Ireland using...
The High Court has issued a damning interim relief decision with a laundry list of Home Office failures in a case challenging the detention of a potential victim of trafficking with mental health issues and several criminal convictions. The case is R (ER) v Secretary of State for the Home...
Here, we look at the practicalities involved in getting a good medico-legal report. We have previously explained what a medico-legal report is and that article should be read alongside this one. These reports can be a game changer in cases involving vulnerable clients, but in the current climate it is...
In R (Abulbakr) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 1183 (Admin), the High Court has ordered the Home Office to pay a detainee £17,500 for 40 days of unlawful detention caused by unreasonable delay in providing a release address. The figure is high for the length...
Ali v The Home Office [2022] EWHC 866 (QB) is a successful appeal against the Central London County Court’s decision to dismiss the false imprisonment claim of a recognised Afghan refugee, detained for 98 days under the Detained Fast Track process in 2015. Larry has previously covered the County Court decision, which...
In R (Babbage) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2995 (Admin), the High Court found that a person with an extensive offending and adverse immigration history who posed high risks of re-offending and absconding was unlawfully detained because of the poor prospects of enforcing his removal...
The High Court has upheld the continued detention of an Indian national in a Category B prison on the basis of a high risk of absconding and serious criminal convictions, despite detention already lasting well over a year. The case is Singh v Secretary of State for the Home Department...
In Ali v Home Office EW Misc 27 (CC) [2020], the County Court robustly dismissed a false imprisonment claim brought by an Afghan refugee who was detained for 98 days under the Detained Fast Track process in 2015. County Court cases are rarely reported and so one might expect something...
A High Court judge has granted immigration bail to an Afghan detainee and made findings which will be helpful to those representing other detainees seeking release during the COVID-19 crisis. The short judgment in (R) Khan v SSHD CO/1366/2020 provides an example of how judges should proceed in light of...
R (SB (Ghana)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor [2020] EWHC 668 (Admin) is a successful unlawful detention claim in which the High Court was prepared to find a breach of the Hardial Singh principles notwithstanding the claimant’s extremely serious offending history. It is primarily interesting...
The Supreme Court has found in the case of DN (Rwanda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 7 that the detention of a Rwandan man facing deportation was unlawful because the deportation order on which detention was based was itself unlawful. In this case the deportation...
The Court of Appeal in ZA (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 146 has made a plea to lawyers to transfer their wrongful detention claims to the Queen’s Bench Division or County Court once the detention issue has been resolved. ZA’s case started life...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in R (AC (Algeria)) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 36. The case is about “grace periods” in unlawful detention claims. A grace period, as described by Lord Justice Irwin in his judgment, is that period of time allowed to the Secretary of State,...
Article 2(n) of the Dublin III regulation provides: Member States shall not hold a person in detention for the sole reason that he or she is subject to the procedure established by this Regulation. When there is a significant risk of absconding, Member States may detain the person concerned in...
The Supreme Court has confirmed in the case of Hemmati v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] UKSC 56 that the detention of asylum seekers for their removal to other EU states under the Dublin Regulation was unlawful between 1 January 2014 and 15 March 2017, when new...
The Home Office cannot detain an EU citizen pending deportation without first considering whether detention is “proportionate and necessary” under EU law, the Court of Appeal has said in R (Lauzikas) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1168. Any decision to detain cannot be based...
The European Court of Human Rights has developed Article 5 ECHR beyond domestic law and potentially created a dramatic increase in the amount of damages payable for unlawful detention caused by a breach of detention policy. VM v United Kingdom (No. 2) (application no. 62824/16) is only a decision of...
In R (Majewski) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 473 (Admin) the High Court has concluded that EU citizens who were unlawfully detained solely because they were homeless should be paid damages at the normal rate. In the important Gureckis judgment of December 2017, the High Court had ruled that...
The High Court has allowed a Home Office appeal arguing that it is not necessarily unlawful to put British citizens in immigration detention. The judgment in Home Office v TR & Anor [2019] EWHC 49 (QB) concerned an eight-month-old baby detained with his mother for almost a fortnight despite lawyers for the...
The High Court has ruled that a claimant is entitled to extra unlawful detention damages for frustration and anxiety where the Home Office fails to provide a release address. The guidance on this issue provided by R (Diop) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 3420 (Admin) is...
This case is an unlawful detention claim based on shocking failures by the Home Office to comply with rules on how victims of torture and trafficking should be treated. In R (SW) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2684 (Admin), the High Court has ruled that...
Thousands of people may have been unlawfully held in immigration removal centres in recent years, the court of appeal has ruled. This opening sentence from a Guardian article the other day refers to the case of R (Hemmati & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ...
R (Aboro) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 1436 (Admin) is an unlawful detention claim about how conflicting psychiatric evidence should be interpreted. The Secretary of State relied upon the evidence of a detention centre doctor, in preference to experts instructed by Mr Aboro, to justify...
R (Eroje) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 1010 (Admin) is a shocking story of Home Office incompetence which led to the unnecessary and unlawful detention of someone who had made repeated attempts to leave the UK voluntarily. Ms Eroje is a Nigerian national and spent...
The case of R (Lauzikas) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 1045 (Admin) marks an important development in the law on the detention of European nationals pending deportation. The key finding is that the standards set out in the Free Movement directive, including proportionality and necessity, must...
Ararso v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 845 is an unusual appeal about the extent to which the Home Office must take account of orders made in previous judicial review proceedings when deciding to re-detain someone. The Court of Appeal held that injunctions against removal...
The government has tabled a number of adjustments to the rules on detention, to come into force this summer. The most significant is the changed definition of “torture” in the context of the detention of vulnerable people. Page contentsGovernment forced to change tack on tortureThe new definition of “torture”Detention of...
Short and sweet is the best way to describe the High Court’s decision in BS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 454 (Admin). It comes as a useful reminder that whether detention is “reasonable” depends on all the circumstances of the case. In particular, the risk of a...
A month ago, Free Movement reported on the detention of Abdulrahman Mohammed. He was awarded the substantial sum of £78,500 by the High Court after being detained unlawfully by the Home Office. In a subsequent judgment, the same court has increased the amount the Home Office must pay, after it...
Both R (Jollah) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No. 2) [2017] EWHC 2821 (Admin) and R (Lupepe) v SSHD [2017] EWHC 2690 (Admin) were heard on 11, 12 and 13 October 2017 by Mr Justice Lewis. It makes sense to look at them together because they both follow up on R...
Abdulrahman Mohammed was last week awarded £78,500 by order of a High Court judge. The career criminal had been detained unlawfully under immigration powers on three occasions by the Home Office for a total period exceeding a year. Unusually, with both parties in agreement that the detention was unlawful, the...
