Man facing deportation to Jamaica gets last minute reprieve

A man who came to the UK from the Caribbean as a teenager is set to be granted an 11th-hour reprieve from being placed on a deportation flight to Jamaica.

About 50 people are thought to have been booked on to Wednesday’s secretive charter flight, the first to Jamaica since the Home Office suspended the flights last April after the Windrush scandal.

After the scandal broke, Sajid Javid eventually said at least 63 people had been wrongly deported to Jamaica.

Joseph Nembhard, 37, who moved to the UK from Jamaica at the age of 18 in 1999 and whose grandmother and several aunts were part of the Windrush generation, has been held at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre.

He had been told he would be put on Wednesday’s flight after being convicted of a violent offence against his former wife.

He was preparing an appeal against his conviction.

Nembhard is a key witness in the inquest into the death of another Jamaican detainee, Carlington Spencer, one of four people who died at Morton Hall immigration removal centre in Lincoln in 2017.

A second man, Christopher Richards, also facing removal on Wednesday’s flight, is also a witness.

The senior coroner for Lincolnshire Timothy Brennand has issued a summons for Nembhard and Richards to attend a pre-inquest review on March 11 so the Home Office will not be able to deport them on Wednesday.

Had the coroner not issued the summons on Monday, Nembhard would be unlikely to be present in the UK for the hearing.

Both men hope the legally binding summons will prevent their deportation on Wednesday’s flight.

Nembhard said he was relieved but devastated that while he was in detention he was separated from his partner who is 24 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child and from their four-year-old daughter.

“A lot of the guys in here who are due to be put on that flight are worried that they will get ill-treated. Many of them are very depressed,” he told the Guardian.

The organisation Movement for Justice said it had spoken to many of those due to fly on Wednesday. Of them, 13 came to the UK as children, 12 have been in the UK for more than 19 years and 18 have Windrush-generation connections. 

Source: The Guardian 

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