On Tuesday, 39 out of 50 foreign criminals scheduled for deportation were removed from their flights after appeals by human rights lawyers.
The flight to Jamaica, scheduled to have left in the early hours of this morning, contained those who had been sentenced to imprisonment for crimes including drug offences, rape, rape of a minor, and murder. It is believed that the majority of those removed were drug offenders, including dealers of Class A drugs, the highest grade for illegal narcotics such as heroin, cocaine, LSD, and ecstasy.
Home Office sources told The Times it had been forced to halt the majority of deportations after successful legal challenges to the criminals’ return to their home country. A similar incident occurred in December when 35 offenders were pulled off a flight to Jamaica after last-minute legal appeals.
According to insiders, some of those claims included that one criminal would face reprisals in Jamaica for being gay and lodged a last-minute asylum claim.
Some argued that under the Human Rights Act, they could not be repatriated because it would separate them from their family, depriving them of a family life guaranteed under the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which informs Britain’s HRA.
Others had their lawyers invoke the UK’s Modern Slavery Act, claiming they would be enslaved if they went home.
Another claimed his life would be at risk if he went home “due to a situation with a gang there”.
Labour MPs had been campaigning to stop the flight, with the former leader of the party and friend of Hamas Jeremy Corbyn calling the deportation of criminals, some of whom are violent, “inhumane”.
Others opposed to the removals include the Black Lives Matter-supporting Diane Abbott, who called them “cruel, arbitrary” and a “double punishment”.
MP Claudia Webbe, who had the party whip withdrawn last year and once called for the rich to be “abolished” for the sake of climate change, claimed: “This is cruel, racist and disproportionate punishment that is not designed to make Britain safer but instead designed to stoke the flames of racial hatred and division.”
Brexit leader Nigel Farage said of the left-wing MPs’ fondness for criminals on Tuesday: “For some reason, Labour wants to keep serious criminals in the United Kingdom. Well, put that in your next election manifesto and good luck to you!”
In December, it was revealed that over 2,500 foreign criminals had been released onto the streets of Britain rather than deported in 2020 alone.
As of March 2021, not one single illegal boat migrant had been deported since the UK formally left the EU’s institutions at the end of 2020. The year before, the Home Office reportedly had complained that “activist lawyers” were taking advantage of human rights law to lodge last-minute appeals to stop the removal of illegals, failed asylum seekers, and criminal migrants.
While in February, a British judge blocked the deportation of a double rapist to Somalia because he would not receive adequate healthcare in his native country and risked being “subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment” by his own community.