Asylum seekers detained by the British Home Office and threatened with deportation to Rwanda are set to take legal action against the government after Rishi Sunak admitted that no flights will take place before the general election. The Home Office started raiding accommodation and detaining people who arrived at routine immigration-reporting appointments on 29 April in a nationwide push codenamed Operation Vector, The Guardian reported.
Some have been held in immigration removal centres for a month, despite the prime minister announcing that flights would not start until after the 4 July election – and only “if I’m re-elected as prime minister” – while Labour has vowed to scrap the scheme if it wins the election.
As per The Observer, the Home Office’s lawyers were fighting legal challenges from detained asylum seekers on the basis that flights to Rwanda were “imminent” and “progressing”, despite the government legal department telling the high court on the same day that there would not be any flights before the election. Lawyers representing detained asylum seekers told the Observer they were mounting challenges for unlawful detention, even before the prime minister’s statement, because people were being seized without the Home Office making the legal decisions necessary to send them to Rwanda.
Lewis Kett, a solicitor at Duncan Lewis, said: “There was no justification for detaining them nine to 11 weeks before any potential flights, and even less so after the prime minister announced no flights would leave before the election.