Third Country Removals
Since leaving the EU, the UK is no longer party (as of January 2021) to the Dublin Regulation which enabled the UK to send people seeking asylum back to an EU member state to process their claim.
The UK government has since been looking for alternative means to avoid processing asylum claims in the UK and in response to the increase in numbers of people who are arriving via the channel to seek sanctuary. Under paragraphs 345A-B of the archived Immigration Rules [1] the government can declare asylum claims “inadmissible” (i.e. not considered) where someone could have made an asylum application in a safe third country and “exceptional circumstances” did not prevent them from doing so. The application of “inadmissibility” was broadened by the The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 which sets out that asylum claims made on or after 28 June 2022 can be deemed inadmissible on the basis that the person seeking asylum has a “connection” to a safe third country (where a “connection” includes having been present in that country on route to the UK). See UK legislation on asylum and detention.
However, for someone's claim for asylum to be processed elsewhere - after being declared inadmissible - there needs to be an agreement in place between the UK and a third country. In April 2022, this led to the UK government to announce its plans to send people to Rwanda. What followed was a series of stalled attempts at removal, legal challenges and the ruling from the Supreme Court that the policy is unlawful because people sent to Rwanda face a real risk of refoulement (being sent back to a country where they risk persecution) [2]. In response, the government of the time passed The Safety of Rwanda Act (2024) to legislate that Rwanda is a safe country and should be treated conclusively as such by courts and decision makers.
In a welcome move, the Labour government has committed to ending plans to deport people to Rwanda. However, they have not ruled out other third country agreements. The Illegal Migration Act (2023) - of which the future is also uncertain and the majority of its provisions are not yet in force - sets out that people can be removed to other third countries designated as “safe” under section 80AA of the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum act [3]. India and Georgia have since been added to this list with the potential to add other countries.
Future Watch: look out for the labour government’s plans for the Illegal Migration Act and any third country agreements.
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