Failures in Support Before the Death of Young Asylum Seeker Alexander Tekle

At the recent inquest into his death, the Coroner found that opportunities were lost before and after Alex’s 18th birthday to provide him with the help and support that he required. In the months before his death, Alex had significant struggles with alcohol addiction and social services did not put in place effective strategies to address these issues. By December 2017, Alex was profoundly worried about his immigration status and was impacted by the death of a close friend by suicide. Alex took his own life on 6 December 2017 whilst severely intoxicated.

Alex’s inquest follows three other inquests relating to the deaths of young Eritrean asylum seekers. These four friends all took their lives within a 16-month period after arriving in the UK. In recent years, there have been an alarming number of suicides among teenagers who arrive in this country as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, highlighting issues with how people like Alex are looked after by local authorities. Alex loved his family and had a great sense of humour. Alex’s father said that Alex thought things would finally get better for him when he arrived in the UK after an incredibly difficult journey. Alex was a well-loved and sociable person and dreamed of becoming a professional cyclist.

Read more: INQUEST, https://rb.gy/1koggb

Continuing Conflicts That Create Refugees - January 2022

Deteriorated Situations: Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Benin, Sri Lanka, Bosnia/Herzegovina

Conflict Risk Alerts: Cameroon Somalia Sudan Ukraine

Foreign involvement in conflicts creates the risk that local clashes light bigger fires.

10 Conflicts to Watch in 2022 - 1. Ukraine 2. Ethiopia 3. Afghanistan 4. United States and China 5. Iran vs. the United States and Israel 6. Yemen 7. Israel-Palestine 8. Haiti 9. Myanmar 10. Islamist militancy in Africa (Briefings on above go here https://rb.gy/hkxbd1)

Troubling undercurrents in 2021 – from the U.S. to Afghanistan, Ethiopia or the climate emergency – didn’t send battle deaths soaring or set the world ablaze. But as our look ahead to 2022 shows, many bad situations round the world could easily get worse.

Read more: ICG, https://rb.gy/tdctx8

How Many People Have Been Stripped of Their British Citizenship?

At least 464 people have been stripped of their British citizenship since the law allowing it was relaxed 15 years ago, Free Movement analysis shows. Home Office figures record 175 people being deprived of their citizenship on national security grounds, and 289 for fraud, since 2006. Before that, it had not happened since 1973.

The data is not readily available but can be pieced together from a combination of historic freedom of information requests and obscure statistical publications. The Nationality and Borders Bill 2021, currently going through Parliament, would allow citizenship deprivation to take place without the person being notified. But the power to take someone’s citizenship away has been in place for many years, and is often used.

A deprivation power can be found in legislation as far back as 1914, but the modern version is in section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981. Section 40(3) permits deprivation in cases of fraud or similar, and section 40(2) where it is “conducive to the public good”. The latter used to be worded very differently, applied only to naturalised citizens and seems to have been thought of as a punishment of last resort for treason. Not a single person was deprived of their British citizenship between 1973 and 2006. But as Colin has explained, in recent years the legal test has been gradually watered down to the point where it can now be used against British-born dual nationals, and even to make naturalised citizens stateless in certain circumstances.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/fz7afb

EU Citizens Fighting Deportation Keep Full Residence Rights

The Home Office has conceded that EU citizens being lined up for deportation retain full residence rights in the meantime. This is so long as they have applied to stay in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme and are protected by the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. The case involved a 19-year-old Portuguese citizen who has lived in the UK all his life but received a four-year prison sentence in 2018. He applied to the Settlement Scheme before the 30 June 2021 deadline and was refused; an appeal is pending. The Home Office initially said that, if released on licence, he would be unable to work or claim benefits. That is because Regulation 23(9) of the EEA Regulations 2016 terminates a person’s right to reside once a removal decision has been made, making them subject to the hostile environment for unauthorised migrants.

But the government has now settled a judicial review pointing out that the Withdrawal Agreement overrides the EEA Regulations in these circumstances. The High Court’s declaration to that effect is available from Doughty Street Chambers, along with a more complete summary of the legal issues. This is an important concession for people being targeted for removal over pre-Brexit criminal offending. Both sides agree that there is “likely to be a significant number of similarly affected people”. The case also reinforces the importance of EU citizens living here before 31 December 2020 availing of the option to apply late to the Settlement Scheme in order to invoke its protections.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/wrj8ob

Six Especially Ugly Bits of Revised Borders Bill That Really Should be Changed

1. No-notice deprivation of citizenship 2. Priority Removal Notices 3. Accelerated detained appeals 4. Abolition of certain appeal rights 5. Notice requirements for removals 6. Insufficient legal aid

The controversial Nationality and Borders Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords this week. One thing that peers on all sides of the house seemed to agree on – even if for different reasons – is that the immigration system is not working well. They’re right. Official figures demonstrate an unacceptably high level of unlawful decision-making. Half the appeals against Home Office immigration decisions are successful in the First-tier Tribunal. Around one third of judicial reviews lodged against the Home Office are either settled or decided in the claimant’s favour, according to the government’s evidence to the Independent Review of Administrative Law. Contrary to the Home Secretary’s stated intention of “ensuring access to justice and upholding the rule of law”, the Borders Bill fails to address the urgent issues with the current system. These include the need for access to proper legal advice and a properly funded courts and tribunals system, as well as better first instance decision-making.

Instead, the Bill contains a series of provisions which make these problems worse: weakening appeal rights despite high levels of wrong initial decisions; requiring judges and Home Office caseworkers to give “minimal weight” to some evidence provided by genuine refugees; creating fast-track processes based on policies previously found to be unlawful; and increasing the Home Secretary’s arbitrary powers, such as the authority to require certain cases to be heard artificially quickly, aggravating the risk of rushed and unlawful outcomes.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/kjdxrt

7,000 Asylum Cases Delayed to Weed Out 48 Inadmissible Claims

Just over a year ago, the Home Office introduced new rules on deeming asylum claims “inadmissible” — rejected out of hand, without consideration on the merits. At the time, Colin pointed out that without agreements on sending people back to a “safe third country” they might have passed through en route to the UK, all this does is delay processing. Figures for the first nine months of 2021 seem to bear that out. 7,000 people were considered for inadmissibility, and 6,600 cases reviewed, but only 48 actually found inadmissible.

The rule of thumb is that if no other country has agreed to take the person back within six months, then their claim will be processed here. As no country is currently obliged to lift a finger to take asylum seekers from Britain, this effectively builds in a six-month processing limbo, which is clearly visible in the data. In Q1 2021, there were 1,914 inadmissibility cases considered, and then in Q3 2021 we see 1,858 people “subsequently admitted into [the] UK asylum process”.

Bail for Immigration Detainees has secured a breakdown of the 48 cases where the person was confirmed as inadmissible. Most had already been given refugee status or similar in another country, which is the least challenging of the paragraph 345A routes to inadmissibility from the Home Office perspective. 29 of the 48 are Eritreans; all have been “accepted for return” to various European countries, including Germany, Italy and Switzerland. Only eight have been sent back so far.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/pzcslp