Britain To Deport 50 Jamaicans Tomorrow

LONDON, England February 10, 2020 (CMC) – A High Court has refused to hear a legal challenge to the deportation of 50 people to Jamaica, as the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, today, insisted that those being deported were criminals, who had been convicted of “serious offences”.

Patel said every person on the flight had been convicted of a “serious offence and received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more”, and that she was bound, by legislation, to deport them.

High Court judge, Justice Sir Nicholas Mostyn, has refused to hear a legal challenge that was launched against the flight, by a firm representing the deportees, after Duncan Lewis Solicitors had argued that the flight’s passengers include people, who are “potential victims of trafficking, groomed as children by drugs gangs running county lines networks and later pursued in the criminal justice system as serious offenders”.

The chartered flight is due to leave for Kingston tomorrow.

Opposition legislator, Nadia Whittome, in a letter, signed by 170 colleagues, had called on Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to cancel the flight until the Lessons Learned Review is published and its recommendations implemented, or risk repeating the Windrush scandal.

In 2018, the British government faced a serious backlash about the treatment of the Windrush generation – named after a ship that brought people to the United Kingdom from the Caribbean in 1948. It emerged that thousands of long-term UK residents were denied access to services, held in detention or removed, despite living, legally, in the country for decades

Windrush campaigners have argued that if someone has the right to citizenship, then it is wrong to deport them, even if they have spent long periods out of the country or committed an offence.

The UK lobby group, Movement for Justice, said that of the 50 people to be deported, 13 came to the UK as children, 12 have been in the UK for more than 19 years and 18 have Windrush-generation connections.

In the letter, Whittome said the cross-parliamentary group argued “not only is there an unacceptable risk of removing anyone with a potential Windrush claim, but there has been a failure, by the government, to remedy the causes of the Windrush scandal”.

“It is therefore, crucial that all further deportations are now cancelled, until the long-awaited Lessons Learned Review is published and its recommendations implemented,” they wrote in the February 9 letter.

Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott, further said the move was unfair, as some had come to the UK as children and “have no memory” of the country of their birth.

She told the Commons that there was “widespread concern, and that the deportation flight “constitutes double jeopardy, because the persons have already served an appropriate sentence for their crime”.

“Many of the proposed deportees came here as children and have no memory of Jamaica,” she said.

But the Home Secretary insisted that every person on the flight had been convicted of a “serious offence”, and that under legislation, introduced by a Labour government in 2007, “a deportation order must be made”.

Last week, the Jamaica government said it has taken every effort to ensure that there are no nationals of the Windrush generation or their descendants with a legitimate claim to permanent residency or citizenship in the United Kingdom, being deported to the island.

“We are aware of the personal impact and sensitivities in these circumstances and therefore, over the last months, the ministry and PICA (Passport Immigration and Citizenship Agency) have worked, quietly, through the Jamaican High Commission in London, to have the British authorities verify that the Charter would not include Windrush persons, and that all individuals removed would be persons, who have exhausted all legal appeals and remedies,” said Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister, Kamina Johnson Smith.