Lawyers & migrant rights campaigners have warned that the government is heading for a repeat of the Windrush scandal after imposing a “cliff edge” deadline by the end of 2024 for immigrants to switch from physical biometric residence permits (BRPs) to digital e-visas.
Our incompetent Home Office is in charge of this change, so it will go swimmingly of course.
Home Office officials fear the number of migrants deported on the first Rwanda flight could be in single figures because of legal challenges.
The concerns are believed to be behind moves to expand the scheme to include ALL failed asylum seekers on top of the initial cohort of 5,700 migrants so far earmarked for deportation.
Given Rwanda only has room for a few hundred currently, this is arrant nonsense and performative cruelty.
The b@stards at the #HomeOffice issued new guidance yesterday on detaining asylum seekers for deportation to #Rwanda.
You can be forcibly sent to Rwanda if your asylum claim has been refused, withdrawn, or treated as withdrawn (which catches anyone in hiding or not turning up to sign on).
However, now you can be detained if you have no ongoing claims or appeals, which catches anyone in the process of appealing but whose solicitors have not yet filed the claim.
Thousands of migrant care workers have been threatened with deportation, despite doing nothing wrong, after the Home Office took enforcement action against their employers.
In 94% of cases, the reason for the cancellation was that the company that hired them had its right to sponsor workers revoked.
Ludicrous, when we're desperate for care workers in the UK.
It looks like the Tories were using the awful Rwanda detentions as a cynical election ploy in local election week, with the media in on it.
Contacts at Loughborough reporting centre say there have been no detentions at all of asylum seekers reporting for bail so far this week. Apparently, the same is happening in London.
If this is true, it's an absolute disgrace to use vulnerable people in this way.
Meanwhile, others live in fear.
The Home Office is dealing with growing fallout as asylum seekers go into hiding or flee across the border to Ireland.
Predictable and ineffective:
"I was an asylum seeker in 2020 when the Home Office was trying to deport as many asylum seekers as possible to European countries they had passed through before Brexit started. Some asylum seekers went into hiding then & I can see that it is happening again because of Rwanda”
Decent article on the climate of fear produced by the disgusting Home Office Rwanda deportation detentions. Of course, the rightwing media is cockahoop.
"The people detained have not had their asylum claims processed, and it’s clear from the first cohort we are in contact with that if their claims were processed they would likely be granted refugee status in the UK.
It reaffirms how shameful the Rwanda plan is and why it must be stopped.”
Heather Marwood, Head of Legal Services, Care4Calais
"Ms Cheema said all the charity workers she had spoken to had been "at the verge of tears for the last few weeks".
"We don't know how best to support people," she added. "They are people who've done nothing wrong, they've committed no offences. They've been met with people banging down their doors, with detention"
An asylum seeker called Ahmed was interviewed on C4 News. He served with the British forces in Afghanistan, but was rejected by the ARAP scheme and has now had a Rwanda letter.
He has started a petition calling on the PM to abandon the Rwanda plan and create safe, organised routes to claim asylum once and for all.
It has 52k signatures and he has asked that it be shared.
The FDA, the union for senior civil servants, has launched a legal challenge against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan over moves to force officials to break international law to carry out deportations.
They could be ordered by ministers to ignore European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) injunctions to carry out deportations, but have a duty under the Civil Service code to abide by the law.
MITIE, who run over 50% of the Government’s detention centres, have an annual turnover of over £4 billion. And they are set to profit from the misery inflicted on people seeking asylum in the UK through the Government’s brutal Rwanda plan
Below is the link to email MITIE and let them know what you think about their participation in this brutal Rwanda plan | Care4Calais
Protests are taking place all over the country at the detentions of asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda.
Here in the East Midlands, at Loughborough Immigration Office, it looks like Mitie is the company being used by the Home Office to detain these vulnerable people when they report. It's a Catch 22. If you don't report, your asylum claim is null & void & you become liable for deportation anyway. #Rwanda#HomeOffice#HumanRights
The Home Office will launch a surprise operation to detain asylum seekers across the UK tomorrow..
Officials will hold refugees who turn up for routine meetings at immigration offices & also pick people up nationwide.
They will be immediately transferred to previously prepared detention centres & held to be put on later flights to Rwanda.
Anyone who takes part in this disgusting operation is breaking international law.
"Police in Scotland have been put on alert because of the high risks of street protests and attempts by pro-refugee campaigners to stop detentions.
Local communities in Scotland have twice prevented deportations by staging mass protests on Kenmure Street in Glasgow, in May 2021, and in Nicolson Square, Edinburgh, in June 2022."
We need the spirit of Kenmure Street across the UK.