Yet another attempted deportation flight has ended in fiasco after judges allowed 28 to escape removal following last-minute legal challenges.
Just eight migrants ended up being removed after 18 put forward human rights appeals for the first time, seven claimed to be modern slavery victims, and three first-time human rights claims, seven said they were victims of modern slavery, and three had their lawyers move to subject their deportation orders to judicial review, according to the Daily Mail.
“I don’t know whose interests these lawyers think they are acting in, but it is certainly not the law-abiding British taxpayer”, complained Tim Loughton MP, a member of the influential Home Affairs select committee.
“It is incomprehensible that we are paying for people to be in the country when they have no case to be here and our hospitality is being abused even further by lawyers using questionable last-minute tactics to take people off planes, adding even more expense with unused flights and further legal wrangles.
“We do the right thing and support genuine asylum seekers with grounds to stay in the UK, but the system is far too open to abuse,” added the Tory parliamentarian — although with his party having been in government since 2010, with a substantial parliamentary majority since the 2019 election, it is should be well within Prime Minister Johnson’s power to have changed “the system” some time ago.
The legal challenges follow a consistent pattern of court action blocking or whittling down the already small number of illegal aliens and foreign national offenders the Home Office attempts to deport, with another 37 migrants having had their removal from the country prevented last week.
In October, one expensive charter flight ended up leaving Britain with just passenger on board, after everyone else — some 29 migrants — mounted legal challenges to their removal, for example.
The previous month a flurry of eleventh-hour legal action was even more successful, blocking the deportation of every single migrant due to be put on a particular removal flight.