Jamaica deportation: Home Office proceeds with flight despite court ruling

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The Home Office says it has proceeded with a planned deportation flight to Jamaica.

It comes after a last-minute court order stopped the government deporting some of those due to leave, amid concerns they had not had access to legal advice.

It is unclear how many people are on the flight, or if it has left the UK.

The Home Office said the court ruling “does not apply to all of the foreign national offenders due to be deported”.

The flight had been due to leave for Kingston at 6:30 GMT on Tuesday.

All those on board are convicted offenders with prison sentences of one year or more, the Home Secretary said.

On Monday, a court ruling banned the government from deporting anyone from two detention centres near Heathrow, after lawyers argued some detainees could not get legal advice because of mobile phone signal issues.

The ruling said the government must not deport anyone from Colnbrooke and Harmondsworth detention centres unless they had access to a functioning, non-O2 Sim card on or before 3 February.

On Tuesday morning, the Home Office said it was proceeding with the flight, adding: “We make no apology for trying to protect the public from serious, violent and persistent foreign national offenders.”

The original number due to be deported on the flight was about 50, but it is unclear how many people are onboard following the ruling.

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.

Labour’s shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said removing the detainees was “unfair”, adding: “Many of the proposed deportees came here as children and have no memory of Jamaica.”

But Home Secretary Priti Patel said many of those on board were guilty of “serious offences”, including rape and dealing class A drugs.

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Every person on the flight had “received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more”, she said.

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

‘I have no-one in Jamaica’

One of those who had been due to be deported on Tuesday is father-of-five Howard Ormsby.

He was jailed for 18 months after he was convicted of possession with intent to supply class A drugs and he was released in December.

“I came here at the age of 15 with my older sister and I’ve been here 18 years of my life,” the 32-year-old said, speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show from a detention centre at Harmondsworth, west London.

“I’ve never tried to deny the fact I’ve made a mistake, but everyone has a chance to right their wrongs.

“I have all my family here – I have no-one in Jamaica.”

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Following the court order on Monday evening, campaigners expressed their delight over the court order.

Bella Sankey, director of charity 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 – which is representing some of those scheduled to be deported – 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.”18.