BID's Director, Celia Clarke, wrote to the Guardian recently to highlight ongoing attempts by the Home Secretary to erect barriers to foreign nationals exercising their Article 8 right to a private and family life.
"How unfortunate Theresa May should choose this moment to announce her plan to put human rights challenges to deportation on the grounds of family and private life out of the reach of foreign nationals (Theresa May pledges to end family rights bar on deportation, 8 April). This comes just as the European Court of Human Rights judgment on the extradition of five men accused of terror offences to the US is handed down.
The intended effect is surely to blur the distinction between extradition and deportation; between untried suspects and those who have served a sentence; and between terror-related offences and the wide range of criminal offences (including very low-level offences) for which long-term UK residents are now facing deportation.
Foreign nationals are an easy target, even when they have lived in the UK most of their lives and have British children. Bail for Immigration Detainees has worked on cases where single parents, who have not committed very serious offences, have been removed from the UK without their children. We have also dealt with cases where such inhuman action has been prevented by legal challenges. The changes May proposes would prevent families from making such challenges. She has sought to trivialise human rights claims made by foreign nationals, but the effects on children in these cases will be catastrophic.
It is deplorable that these measures should be announced in the wake of the passage of the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill, which removes deportation and general immigration matters from the scope of legal aid from April 2013."
Celia Clarke
Director, Bail for Immigration Detainees
