[ad_1]
A final legal attempt by two children to prevent many of those on a controversial Home Office deportation flight to Jamaica from flying on Wednesday has failed, just hours before the charter plane was expected to take off.
The children, two brothers, who brought the case on behalf of their father, argued that the current deportation policy was illegal because the Interior Ministry has not adequately assessed the best interests of the children whose parents it seeks to deport.
Although the children’s father was removed from the flight in a separate legal action, permission to assess the best interests of all children whose parents were required to fly before the flight took off was denied.
The charity Detention Action, which intervened in the case, said that some of the behavior displayed by children facing forced separation from their parents for at least the next 10 years includes bed-wetting, banging their heads against the wall, bad suicidal humor and ideas. .
Many of the men who were to board the plane were distraught at the prospect of leaving their families and children in the UK.
One told The Guardian: “I have lived here for 20 years. What the Ministry of the Interior is doing to us is like torture. They are killing us. My life is here, my children are here. I dare not tell my children that they are deporting me. I am not a murderer, I am not a rapist. I made a mistake selling drugs. “
The children hoped to obtain a court order preventing the flight from leaving until an evaluation had been carried out on all the children about to be separated from their parents. The case reached the appeals court on Tuesday for an after-hours hearing and concluded around midnight. Although the request for a court order was unsuccessful, the case will continue.
In February this year, the government deported 17 British residents to Jamaica. The Interior Ministry had planned to carry out 50 deportations via the flight, but most were stopped by a court order of appeal due to problems of access to justice.
On Tuesday night, the detainees were taken from three Home Office detention centers: Pennine House in Manchester, Colnbrook, near Heathrow Airport, and Brook House, near Gatwick Airport. The largest number of people who boarded the plane came from Brook House. Many of those who were supposed to fly were removed from the plane after successful last-minute legal appeals related to their individual cases. But around 20 are believed to have boarded buses that took them to the flight.
No one who arrived in the UK under the age of 12 is believed to be on the flight after the Home Office and Jamaica quietly agreed to an agreement not to expel people who came to the UK as children, according to the High Commissioner for Jamaica, Seth Ramocan. .
Charter flights to Jamaica are particularly controversial because of the Windrush scandal and because some people destined for deportation came to the UK as children and had families there.
Various letters of protest were organized. One was 82 black public figures, including author Bernardine Evaristo, model Naomi Campbell and historian David Olusoga, who urged airlines not to carry up to 50 Jamaicans on the Home Office deportation flight.
Several NGOs, dozens of attorneys and lawyers, including 11 QCs, signed a letter saying that the deportation flight was illegal, unfair and racist.
More than 60 MPs and colleagues signed a letter to Interior Secretary Priti Patel, calling for the deportation flight to be canceled.
Windrush’s attorney, Jacqueline McKenzie, condemned the Home Office’s decision to charter the deportation flight.
“Deportation is at the pinnacle of the hostile environment,” he said. “It requires legislative reform and it should figure in the work that the Home Office has to do after reviewing the lessons learned from Windrush.”
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said: “We do not apologize for trying to eliminate dangerous foreign criminals in order to maintain the safety of the public. Every week we take foreign criminals out of the UK to different countries who have no right to be here, this flight is no different. People arrested for this flight include convicted murderers and rapists.
