UK government left impotent by courts blocking deportation of illegal migrants
The article discusses the United Kingdom goverment’s difficulties in deporting illegal migrants due to court interventions. Recently,a judge at the London High Court blocked the deportation of a 25-year-old Eritrean migrant,citing the need to further investigate his claim of being a trafficking victim. This ruling is part of a broader pattern of legal challenges preventing the government from implementing its “one-in-one-out” deportation deal with France, where migrants crossing the English Channel illegally would be exchanged for approved asylum seekers based in France.
The ongoing judicial obstacles have frustrated efforts by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration to control illegal immigration through mass deportations. Despite assurances from Justice minister Alex Davies-Jones that deportations will resume, no specific timelines have been provided to avoid alerting human smugglers.
The situation has gained political meaning amid the state visit of former U.S. President Donald Trump to the UK, known for his tough immigration policies, which inspired parts of the UK’s right-wing political agenda. Public opinion surveys reveal considerable support among Britons for stricter immigration controls, including large-scale removals of migrants.
Right-wing Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has criticized the government’s deportation efforts as ineffective, promoting rather a plan to deport hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants within five years by withdrawing from international human rights agreements to overcome legal challenges.
the UK government faces significant legal and political hurdles in executing its immigration deportation strategy,with courts delaying removals and opposition politicians pushing for even more aggressive policies.
UK government left impotent by courts blocking deportation of illegal migrants
The United Kingdom‘s Labour-led government has found itself listless in efforts to deport illegal migrants entering the country as courts block planned deportations.
Judge Clive Sheldon of the London High Court blocked the deportation of a 25-year-old foreign national from Eritrea, which is in eastern Africa, on Wednesday, preventing him from being sent back to France. The judge ruled that the unnamed immigrant’s claim of being a trafficking victim warranted further investigation.
“It seems there is a serious issue to be tried with respect of the trafficking claim and whether or not the secretary of state has carried out her investigatory duties in a lawful manner,” Sheldon said in an oral ruling.
“In my view, there’s a serious case to be tried as to whether or not the removal decision is lawful,” the judge added. “If there is a reasonable suspicion he has been trafficked, that would amount to a statutory bar for removal, at least for a short period of time.”
The unnamed immigrant, who is just one of countless illegal migrants who enter the U.K. on small boats from France via the English Channel, will be allowed to remain in the country until the trafficking claims are investigated.
This is a blow to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s “one-in-one-out” initiative with France, an agreement to exchange illegal channel crossers for France-based asylum-seekers who have already been approved for entry.
Similar legal challenges are popping up among the dozens of asylum-seekers that Starmer sought to deport this week, ultimately sending the deportation flights to France without a single migrant on board.
Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones dismissed inquiries into the state of the deportation initiative following the successful legal challenge.
“I’m not going to comment or give a running commentary on what is happening here,” Davies-Jones told Times Radio on Tuesday.
She affirmed that “deportations will be happening as soon as possible” but refused to comment on timelines, providing a “time-by-time, day-by-day movement on our returns policy” would allow human smugglers to “know what the government is doing when, and they would be able to respond to that.”
The failure of the planned deportations has occurred at an uncomfortable time.
President Donald Trump, whose tough-on-immigration position has helped lower southern border crossings to virtually zero since his second term began, is currently on a state visit to the U.K.
It was the success of the “Make America Great Again” model that inspired British right-wing leaders to reconsider mass deportations, moving the issue from a “political impossibility” to a central pillar of their policies.
Just under half of Britons said they would go so far as to advocate “admitting no more new migrants, and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the U.K. in recent years to leave,” according to a YouGov poll conducted last month.
Thus, even if the asylum-swap scheme eventually worked as imagined, it would do little to assuage the frustration of more right-wing voters who are demanding much more aggressive tactics to combat small boat migration.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage dismissed any government explanations following Wednesday’s failed deportations and lambasted the “one-in-one-out” initiative as inherently unproductive.
“Even if the policy worked — one in, one out, and another one in — [it] still means plus one for every one that crosses the channel,” Farage said in a video posted to social media. “Please do not take seriously anything this Government says about dealing with illegal immigration. They’re not telling you the truth.”
Noting that several media outlets booked seats on the plane that left without any illegal migrants on board, Farage joked, “Labour managed to deport more journalists than illegal migrants today.”
Reform UK, the populist right-wing party currently leading nationwide opinion polls, has made mass deportations a cornerstone of its messaging.
Farage gave a speech last month at Oxford Airport in London in which he promised to deport approximately 600,000 illegal migrants in a five-year window.
NIGEL FARAGE PROMISES MASS DEPORTATION OF ASYLUM-SEEKERS IF REFORM UK ELECTED
The event, which featured a mock airline departures board that read “illegal migrants boarding,” outlined Reform UK’s plan to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations’s 1951 Refugee Convention to cut through judicial red tape.
Over 30,000 foreign nationals have crossed the English Channel in 2025. Approximately 37,000 crossed throughout the previous year.
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