Deportation
Being deported from the UK is a grave matter, and often comes with distress and shock for people who the Home Office is seeking to deport, as well as the visitors who are visiting them. The shock is usually a response to the realisation that people who may have lived in the UK for years - decades even - can be forcibly removed even if they entered the UK lawfully and have leave to remain. Long term residence and family connections - including marriage - offer no protection, meaning that parents can be deported without their children.
The opportunities for challenging deportation have shrunk significantly over recent years. There is no automatic right to appeal a decision to deport, and the Home Office can decide that, even if an appeal is allowed, it can only be brought from outside the UK after the person has been deported. These provisions are sometimes referred to as ‘deport first, appeal later’. This policy was declared unlawful in a Supreme Court ruling in 2017 [1] because it deprived people of their right to an effective appeal. However in 2023 the Home Office announced its intentions to restart this policy [2].
Anyone who the Home Office is seeking to deport, should be encouraged to seek immigration legal advice without delay. Deportation is now out of the scope of legal aid, so legal advice will either have to be paid for or covered by Exceptional Case Funding (ECF) from the Legal Aid Agency. ECF is available for people for whom their human rights would be breached if they did not have access to a lawyer.
Resource Tip
The Public Law Project has useful guides on ECF and how to apply:
For people facing deportation who cannot get a lawyer, BID produces self help materials on deportation and has a project providing legal advice and representation to people facing deportation. Right to Remain’s Toolkit sets out this complex process very clearly. Given the current state of legal aid, if a person facing deportation cannot afford to pay for immigration advice and/or cannot obtain exceptional case funding, it is better to provide responses themselves to Home Office documents than to do nothing at all.
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