Back in december 2020 which is only a month ago the government decided that deportation restrictions would continue rather than be postponed even if it would be the most inhumane and dangerous thing to do, especially at the current time.
One of those people originally scheduled to be deported is Osime Brown, a 21 year old man with severe autism whose crime was stealing a mobile phone in a phone robbery. He was convicted under the joint enterprise law. A cross-party group of 55 MPs have signed an early day motion calling for the Home Office to suspend the plan to deport 21-year-old Osime Brown to Jamaica. With Windrush generation deportations, we thought we had seen the last of this.
There is a petition on change.org calling for the Home Office to halt the deportation of Osime Brown which I among thousands of people have signed
He has been in the country since he was four years old.
This week the Home office were forced to cancel deportations after a covid-19 outbreak in the Brooks house immigration removal centre near Gatwick airport. Yesterday on the 9th December 2020 detainees received a written notice that the facility had been deemed an outbreak centre of covid 19 and that the detainees would not be able to leave their wing.
Approximately 20 asylum seekers were due to be removed from the country on charter flights this week were told that their deportations had been halted.
A Home office spokesperson confirmed that they were aware of numerous amounts of covid-19 cases in the facility.
Another one of those people who was scheduled for deportation this week is 48 year old Errol Wright a Jamaican national who has been in the UK for 22 years was due to be deported last week on a charter flight to Jamaica which was scheduled to happen on the week we exited lockdown and entered the tiered restrictions.
Last week a man who was deported to Jamaica on the same week we came out of lockdown reportedly tested positive for covid-19 on his arrival in Jamaica.
Despite the third lockdown and soaring levels of covid-19 the Home Office is unfortunately pushing ahead with deportation flights.
The decision for the Home Office to push ahead with the deportations contradicts 2020’s UN statement which warned that “forced returns may intensify serious public health risks for everyone as well as placing “additional strain” on countries of return.
Due to high levels of unemployment as a result of covid-19 deportees are at increased risk of human trafficking on return to country of their origin and are are at increased risk of contracting covid-19.
There is also a risk where the UK is spreading covid-19 further to other countries such of which have been hit hard and others which have handled the pandemic much better than the UK and other European countries by pressing on with these deportations despite knowing how high the risk of contracting covid-19 is.
To conclude I think the government needs to halt the deportations completely instead of risking people's lives especially when some of the countries have a very high case rate and death toll as well as a weak health system.
As long as the borders are closed or the countries are in lockdown deportations won’t happen at all.
