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Six Jamaican detainees given last-minute deportation reprieve Last-minute legal moves save detainees from deportation flight to Jamaica
(about 9 hours later)
At least six Jamaican detainees are understood to have been granted a last-minute reprieve from a deportation flight. Last-minute legal interventions have led to a number of detainees being removed from a deportation flight to Jamaica, but the Home Office said 29 others were onboard the chartered plane.
The Home Office has not confirmed the timing of the private Titan Airways jet’s takeoff or the location. More than 50 foreign national offenders who were being held in detention centres were reported to be due to be placed on the flight. But many of them were able to have their removal cancelled after their lawyers took action.
Campaigners say Owen Haisley, a musician from Manchester who has lived in north-west England since the age of four, is among them. The Home Office initially indicated that many of those due to be deported were rapists and murderers. But officials provided a breakdown of crimes committed by the offenders on Wednesday that said one person on the flight had been convicted of murder and four of various sexual offences including rape.
Haisley came to the UK in the late 1970s and was granted indefinite leave to remain when he was 11. He was due to be deported to Jamaica after serving a 12-month jail sentence for assault. Fourteen people on the flight – almost half of those being deported – were convicted of drugs offences. Six people had been convicted of violent crimes including grievous bodily harm and battery and three of firearms and weapon offences. One person’s conviction was for dangerous driving.
Marzel Bolton is also thought to have been granted a reprieve, along with Christopher Richards and Lascelles White. Several other detainees have also been reported to have been granted a last-minute reprieve.
Shaquille Omiel Bailey spoke to the Guardian from Colnbrook immigration removal centre on Wednesday morning. He said he had his bags packed ready to get on the flight but on Tuesday claimed asylum and was not collected by escorts in the evening to board the flight. He served 18 months in prison for a class A drugs offence
“I’ve lived here for 12 years,” he said. “All my family are here. I have nobody in Jamaica. I’m very relieved they didn’t take me last night.”
Christopher Richards, a witness in the inquest of Carlington Spencer, a detainee who died in 2017, has also been granted a reprieve.
New Jamaica deportation flights attacked as 'insult to Windrush victims'New Jamaica deportation flights attacked as 'insult to Windrush victims'
He contacted the Guardian just before midnight on Tuesday and said he believed detainees were being collected to be put on the flight. The Home Office said the total combined sentences of the 29 people on the flight amounted to more than 150 years. Lawyers, human rights activists and others have expressed concern about the charter flight and the last-minute nature of the decisions to remove some people from it.
“We’re locked in our cells but I can see a few things through a crevice in my cell door,” he said. “I can hear a lot of banging and shouting. This morning I could see 11 cells of Jamaican men all locked up and empty. They’ve gone. There are only five Jamaicans left on my wing now,” he said. ”The mood here yesterday was very bad. Usually the Jamaican guys play dominoes but nobody wanted to play dominoes yesterday.” The former prisons ombudsman Stephen Shaw, who has conducted two independent reviews of immigration detention for the Home Office, said the inclusion of people who have lived in the UK since childhood on these flights was “very cruel”.
A Home Office spokesman said officials would not confirm the timing of the deportation flight, adding: “It is only right that we seek to deport foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK. This ensures we keep the public safe. All individuals on this charter flight are serious criminals.” Shaw recommended in a report published last July that foreign national offenders who had been in the UK since childhood should not be removed.
Omar Khan, of the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust, expressed concern about the late cancellation of some detainees’ places on the flight: “These ad hoc reprieves are a reflection of the dysfunctional nature of the system.” He raised concerns about the government’s decision to go ahead with the deportation flight before the publication of the Windrush lessons learned review.
Some people were told they would not be flying hours before the plane was due to leave. Others were removed from the flight just before it took off and returned to detention centres.
Shaw said that while the legislation introduced in 2007 was clear that those who had served sentences of more than a year should be deported, there was some room for manoeuvre.
“The Home Office does have some discretion on this issue. It can place much higher value on family ties. It just needs to change its approach. It’s very cruel to remove people in this way,” he said.
Twane Morgan, who was discharged from the army with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2007 after serving two tours of Afghanistan, was reported to have been waiting on the flight in handcuffs before being removed.
Morgan was told he must leave the country after he stabbed and almost killed a man in Birmingham in 2010 and was subsequently sentenced to six years in prison.
Two witnesses to the death of the Jamaican immigration detainee Carlington Spencer in 2017 – Joseph Nembhard and Christopher Richards – were not deported following last-minute legal intervention from their lawyers and a witness summons from the senior Lincolnshire coroner stating they were required to attend a pre-inquest review hearing next month.
The Labour MP Lucy Powell said her constituent Owen Haisley was also taken off the list for deportation at the last minute after she raised his situation with the home secretary, Sajid Javid, and the immigration minister Caroline Nokes on Tuesday. Haisley, a youth worker and DJ who has been in the UK for 41 years, since he was four, was issued with a deportation order after serving a 12-month sentence for assault.
Haisley remains in detention and has not been told whether he will be released. “No one has explained anything to me. Last night my name was on a list to be deported and then it was off the list. I don’t know why,” he said by telephone from his cell. “I just hope the Home Office understand now that I have been here for 41 years and that my whole life is here, and I’m British.”
Charities in Kingston were planning to assist some of the deportees on arrival in Jamaica. Those on the flight were expected to be met by Jamaican police and processed at a police station near the airport. Anyone without relatives to stay with would be helped by the National Organisation for Deported Migrants (NODM) and other housing charities, said Oswald Dawkins, who runs the NODM.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The law requires that we seek to deport foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK. This ensures we keep the public safe.”
Immigration and asylumImmigration and asylum
JamaicaJamaica
AmericasAmericas
Commonwealth immigrationCommonwealth immigration
Windrush scandal
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