Courts Block Three Quarters of Final Deportation Attempts

immigration enforcement van uk
Laura Lean/Getty
Liam Deacon

Courts are ruling against the Home Office in almost three-quarters of final attempts to remove alleged illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from the country, new figures show.

Migrants claiming asylum in the UK are allowed to appeal the initial decision made by the Home Office in an immigration court.

Of the 11,974 cases that were determined in court in the year from April 2017 to March 2018, 4,332 of the Home Office’s decisions were overturned, a freedom of information request obtained by The Guardian shows.

Of those who were allowed by the courts to stay, the Home Office then referred 1,235 to the upper tribunal for further appeal, and 900 (73 percent) were rejected by an independent judge.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “The Home Office carefully considers all allowed appeals and only challenges these in the upper tribunal where we believe there has been a material error of law.

“We reject any suggestion that allowed appeals are challenged as a matter of routine. The vast majority of onward appeals are made by appellants where the first tier tribunal has dismissed their appeals.”

In March of this year, it was reported that fewer than one in ten bogus asylum seekers arriving in the UK from the EU are transferred back to the first nation in the bloc they entered, as rules require.

The so-called Dublin III regulations allow EU member-states to deport asylum seekers if they have already passed through another EU country, on the grounds that they should not be in danger in any of them.

Research by the Migration Watch UK think tank found that despite making 5,712 transfer requests in 2017, just 314 migrants were actually removed.

Meanwhile, 461 migrants were transferred to the UK under Dublin regulation rules, which also allow EU countries to move asylum seekers to another member-state if they have family there.

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