On Monday 19 December, UK high court judges are due to rule on challenges to the UK government’s controversial policy of deporting migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Irregular migration is a thorny political issue for the UK government, which has vowed to tighten borders after the country left the EU.
It is currently grappling with how to deal with a record number of more than 40,000 migrants who have crossed the English Channel from their European neighbors in small boats this year alone.
In an attempt to cope with the record number of arrivals, the Conservative government of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a plan in April to deport thousands of miles of migrants to Rwanda, sparking a storm of outrage.
Under the deal, the British government hoped to send anyone who entered the UK illegally, as well as those who had arrived illegally since January 1, to Rwanda. But the deportation flights were hampered by a series of legal challenges in UK courts and at the European Court of Human Rights.
A first flight for a small group of asylum seekers was due to take off from the UK in June but was halted after a last-minute court order from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
In the UK, individual asylum seekers brought a court challenge, the PCS union, whose members would have to implement the removals, and immigrant support groups Care4Calais and Detention Action.
Before the first full hearing on that challenge in September, PCS Secretary General Mark Serwotka said sending asylum seekers to Rwanda was “not only immoral and illegal, but one our members tell us is also unfeasible.”
‘Global migration crisis’
Lawyers for the parties argued that the policy was illegal on multiple grounds, including Rwanda’s assessment as a safe third country.
The charity Asylum Aid put up a second challenge.
Johnson defended the policy as vital to solving the problem of the “illegal traffic across the English Channel of people whose lives are being put at risk by gangs.”
Four people died last week after a small boat full of migrants capsized in the Canal in freezing weather.
After Johnson was ousted, his successors as party leader and prime minister, first Liz Truss and then Rishi Sunak, vowed to continue the policy.
Sunak’s Home Minister Suella Braverman has said her “dream” is to finally see a plane carrying migrants take off for Kigali.
In an interview published on Saturday, Braverman suggested that the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN refugee convention, which have put obstacles in the way of Rwandan policy, were outdated when it comes to modern migration.
“There are legitimate questions about whether that international framework is fit for purpose when we are looking at a global migration crisis,” he said. The times diary.
Such international conventions and agreements were established after World War II and “were designed for a world where travel was not cheap, the numbers were much lower, the flows of people were much smaller,” he said, adding that the government was looking for something similar. agreements to that of Rwanda with other countries.
The judges are due to render decisions in both challenges before the court on Monday. — Agence France-Presse
