Jamaica deportation: Appeal court issues order over phone access

The Court of Appeal has ordered the Home Office not to deport people to Jamaica on Tuesday unless they had access to a functioning, non-O2 Sim card on or before 3 February.

The order comes after a charity argued some set to be deported from two detention centres could not get legal advice due to issues with an O2 mast.

Earlier, Labour’s Diane Abbott said removing the detainees was “unfair”.

But Home Secretary Priti Patel said many were guilty of “serious offences”.

Ms Patel said every person on the flight had “received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more”.

Therefore under legislation introduced by the Labour government in 2007, she said, “a deportation order must be made”.

But the government has faced pressure 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.

The flight to Kingston is due to leave on 11 February and is expected to include a man who arrived in the UK at the age of five.

Speaking in the Commons, shadow home secretary Ms Abbott said: “Many of the proposed deportees came here as children and have no memory of Jamaica.”

‘Delighted’

Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, said she was “delighted” by the ruling adding that: “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 tomorrow’s [Tuesday’s] flight.”

“We understand that this will apply to at least 56 people.”

And Toufique Hossain, director of public law at Duncan Lewis, said: “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.”

Responding to the judgement in the House of Commons, Immigration Minister Kevin Foster said “I’m not going to comment on a case that’s literally just been concluded.

“Obviously we’ll consider what the judgment says, because I’ve noticed the details of it may not be quite what some are portraying.”