Kent Public Law expert David Radlett says that the Home Office was previously ordered to retrieve a deported asylum-seeker in 1991 following news today that an immigration judge has made the order to retrieve a deported migrant family for the first time.
A report in The Independent said that the order to retrieve a migrant mother and her five-year-old son from Nigeria was ‘believed to be the first time that an immigration judge has demanded that the Government retrieve asylum-seekers previously deported from the UK.’
David comments: ‘A court first ordered the recovery of a person improperly deported from the UK in M v Home Office (1991). Mr Justice Garland ordered the Home Secretary “to procure forthwith the return of M to the jurisdiction of the High Court, and pending such return to ensure that M be kept in the care of the servants or agents of the Secretary of State or of Her Majesty’s Government in Zaire”.
‘Sadly this was not done, and I believe that M disappeared. Equally sadly, in my view, the Home Secretary was not committed to prison in the subsequent landmark contempt proceedings. If the government wish to proceed in this way, they will need to promote an a Act of Parliament specifically authorizing them to do so, and proceed to sack any judge who presumes thereafter to defy the sovereign will of Parliament. It is to be hoped that they do not go down this road.’
David is a Lecturer in Law at Kent Law School, currently teaching Public Law. Read more about his research and publications on his staff profile.