On Monday morning the High Court in London ruled on the UK government’s highly controversial plan to deport to Rwanda asylum seekers of all origins who entered Britain illegally, giving the Conservative government a major victory.
“The court found that it was legal for the UK government to arrange for asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda and have their asylum claims examined in Rwanda rather than in the UK,” read a summary of the High Court’s ruling He believed that the regulations planned by the government do not violate the Refugee Convention.
Since the beginning of the year, around 45,000 have arrived on the English coast, compared with 28,526 in 2021. And four migrants, including a teenager, died attempting the crossing on December 14. In April, Boris Johnson’s government struck a deal with Rwanda to return asylum seekers who had arrived illegally on British soil to that country. A policy designed to discourage illegal channel crossings.
The evictions have not yet taken place
No deportation has taken place so far – a first flight scheduled for June was canceled following a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) – but Rishi Sunak’s government is continuing this policy. At the beginning of October, the far-right Home Secretary Suella Braverman shared her “dream” at Christmas: “(…) to see a plane take off for Rwanda”.
This decision comes after appeals from migrant aid organizations such as Care4Calais, Detention Action and Asylum Aid, as well as the public sector union PCS. In September, before the hearing began, the general secretary of the PCS union, Mark Serwotka, judged the deportation of migrants to Rwanda to be “not only immoral but illegal”. He had called on the Interior Ministry to “give up its hostile attitude towards refugees”.