The Home Office unlawfully removed an asylum seeker from the UK and unlawfully detained her in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre, the Court of Appeal has held.
The woman, PN, who is now 27 years old, claimed asylum on the grounds she would be persecuted for being a lesbian if returned to Uganda. The Home Office rejected her claim on the basis of lack of proof. PN came to the UK, aged 17 years, as an accompanying child on a visitor’s visa but was arrested as an over-stayer three years later. She was held and removed under the detained fast track (DFN) process―a system that was used for about 10,000 cases before ending in 2015 after being held ultra vires and unlawful. The Home Office was ordered by the High Court to help PN return to the UK, but after doing so it appealed, arguing that PN’s removal had not been unlawful.
In R (oao) PN (Uganda) v Home Secretary [2020] EWCA Civ 1213 this week, however, the Court of Appeal dismissed the home secretary’s appeal. It granted PN’s cross-appeal in part, holding that periods of her detention were unlawful.
Sulaiha Ali, solicitor, Duncan Lewis, who acted for PN, said the DFT process meant asylum seekers ‘were subjected to extremely truncated time frames in which to put forward their asylum claims.
‘This process has since been declared as unlawful and we are extremely pleased that the Secretary of State’s latest attempt to try and reargue matters that have already been determined by the court has been refused. We hope that she now turns her efforts to considering our client’s protection claim promptly, given that her actions caused our client to be subjected to a structurally unfair process that resulted in her being unlawfully detained and removed to Uganda where she was exposed to horrific rape and torture.’
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