Jenni Russell in The Times.
An immigration tribunal has just ruled that a jailed Congolese drug dealer may remain in Britain because he has a sick son who would benefit from having his father here. The dealer, Mr X, was given three years for Class A drug dealing in 2023. As with every foreign prisoner sentenced to longer than 12 months, he was an automatic candidate for deportation.
Sending such foreign criminals home has been law in Britain since 2007, and the Home Office says it is a “longstanding national priority”. Only those who successfully argue that they qualify for legal exceptions may stay. Yet a string of successful appeals have left the impression that the balance between offenders’ rights and those of UK citizens has gone awry.
Mr X’s lawyers used the Human Rights Act (HRA), which enshrines Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to family and private life, to argue that their client should stay. They said he had a “strong and stable” relationship with his children, one of whom, a haemophiliac, requires weekly injections.
The Home Office argued that his incarceration meant a severely limited relationship with the children, that there was no evidence of his being a positive role model from prison, and that the mother, her family and friends were filling the parenting gap. The government lost. Deportation would be “too harsh” on the son, the tribunal ruled.
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