Murders, Child Sex Offenders Spared Deportation to Jamaica After Dozens of Criminals Removed from Flight

A deportation flight to Jamaica left with just four ejected people on board after 33 had lodged last-minute appeals, the Home Office has admitted.

The government department in charge of borders and law enforcement said that 13 of the legal challenges had occurred 24 hours before the Wednesday morning flight was due to take off.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said she found the delays to removing the criminals “absolutely galling”, according to the BBC.

Ms Patel said she “makes no apology for removing foreign nationals who have committed crimes which will have had a devastating impact on their victims”, with Sky News revealing some of those saved from having to go home include child sex offenders, murders, and kidnappers, as well as those convicted of drugs and firearms offences.

A Home Office source told The Telegraph: “Despite having numerous opportunities to raise legal challenges at any stage of the immigration process, asylum claims, appeals and judicial reviews are all commonly raised in the last few days before removal by people awaiting return.

“These generally lead to release from detention – despite the fact the vast majority do not receive a positive outcome for the applicant when the claim is reviewed.”

A similar scenario occurred in August, when 39 out of 50 Jamaican national criminals were pulled off a flight after appeals from human rights lawyers. Sources speaking to the media at the time said that some of the claims being used to avoid deportation included one who claimed he would face reprisals in his home country because he was gay, others that it would be an infringement of their human rights to be separated from their families, and another claimed he would be enslaved if he went home.

Patel said: “The people removed to Jamaica today are convicted criminals who have been found guilty of a range of serious offences. They have no place in our society.

“It is absolutely galling that, yet again, last-minute legal claims have stopped the removal of 33 people, including those guilty of abhorrent crimes such as murder and child sex offences.

“This is why our Nationality and Borders Bill will deliver changes to the law to make it easier to remove foreign criminals and prevent them from gaming the broken system.”

In 2020, Priti Patel’s office had reportedly had complained that “activist lawyers” were taking advantage of the European human rights law embedded in British legislation to bring about last-minute appeals to stop deportations of criminal migrants, illegal aliens, and failed asylum seekers.

British justice also has to contend with activist judges, when in February of this year, an immigration judge blocked the second attempt to deport a Somali double rapist — deemed to pose a “high risk of serious harm” to the public — because he would not get proper mental healthcare in Africa, and that because of his mental illness he might be stigmatised by his community.

The Home Office said that the number of appeals against deportation that evoked the Modern Slavery Act — including criminal migrants claiming they risk becoming victims of slavery if they are returned home — had quadrupled since 2018.