UK Government’s Plan to Send Asylum Seekers to Rwanda for Processing is Legal, Rules High Court

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Oliver JJ Lane

The UK High Court has ruled the government’s plan to open migrant processing centres in Rwanda is lawful, yet further legal challenges await the plan and will likely considerably delay the policy being enacted.

The now longstanding aspiration by the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party-led government to send would-be asylum seekers to centres in Rwanda for processing, rather than at home in the UK itself, is fundamentally legal the High Court has ruled. While the ruling has settled for now legal cases brought in June when the first migrant flight was due to take off, the UK is now subject to new courts who could also hear the case, and pro-migrant lawyers have already vowed appeals.

Under the plan, migrants who fell under certain categories — including most brought to the UK as stowaways or boat migrants by people smugglers — could be eligible to be removed to Rwanda by the British government. Those migrants could then claim asylum in Rwanda and live there, but while their claims were being processed would live in hostels paid for by the British government.

Not only would sending migrants to Rwanda rather than expensively housing them in the United Kingdom save money, but the possibility of less desirable Rwanda as a final migration destination for those chancing the potentially lethal English Channel crossing should act as a deterrent, the government believes.

Critics said the plan treated migrants like “human cargo”, however, and that people starting new lives in Rwanda rather than the United Kingdom would cause suffering. It would be inhumane to say to people that wanted to live in the UK that they should live somewhere else, they also said.

Judge Clive Lewis said “The court has concluded that it is lawful for the government to make arrangements for relocating asylum-seekers to Rwanda and for their asylum claims to be determined in Rwanda rather than in the United Kingdom. On the evidence before this court, the Government has made arrangements with the government of Rwanda which are intended to ensure that the asylum claims of people relocated to Rwanda are properly determined in Rwanda.”

Nevertheless, the court said that there were further questions over the cases of eight individual migrants that needed addressing.

The Home Secretary Suella Braverman hailed the result, in comments reported by The Sun’s Harry Cole: “We’ve always maintained that this policy is lawful and today the Court has upheld this. I’m committed to making this Partnership work – my focus remains on moving ahead with the policy as soon as possible and we stand ready to defend against any further legal challenge.”

Over 44,000 boat migrants have come to the United Kingdom so far this year, the highest level ever. The government unveiled another plan to stem the flow last week, but with long-standing Conservative failures — either by accident or design — to control migration levels, no serious prospect of improvement is presently on the horizon.

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