Two escape immediate deportation to Jamaica from UK after legal challenge

Two people have escaped immediate deportation to Jamaica after 11th-hour interventions by their lawyers as the Home Office was accused of trying to remove people while their applications to remain in the UK under the Windrush scheme were still being considered.

Lascelles White, 61, moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1973 when he was five years old.

He has applied to regularise his status under the Windrush scheme but has not received a response.

Instead, he was detained and was facing deportation on a charter flight to Jamaica thought to be taking off as early as Wednesday.

White’s solicitor, Connie Sozi from Deighton Pierce Glynn, made an urgent out-of-hours application to the high court to try to prevent his deportation and on Tuesday night, as the judge was considering the application, the Home Office informed Sozi that White would no longer be put on the flight.

Christopher Richards, who is a witness in the inquest of Carlington Spencer, an immigration detainee who died in 2017, also learned on Tuesday that his deportation has been deferred by the Home Office following last-minute legal representations by his solicitor Imogen Townley at Wilsons solicitors.

Home secretary Sajid Javid told parliament on Tuesday: “None of those being deported are British citizens or members of the Windrush generation.”

Earlier on Tuesday Labour MP David Lammy criticised the decision to restart mass deportation flights back to the Caribbean before the publication of an independent investigation into what had caused the Windrush scandal.

“How can you be confident that you are not making the same mistakes?” he asked.

Source: The Guardian 

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