Successful legal challenges to Rwanda removal flight

Our immigration and public law teams represented four of the individuals who were facing removal to Rwanda yesterday on the first charter flight under the government’s new policy. In all cases we argued that the individuals concerned should not be removed due to their individual circumstances and we also argued that the policy was in contravention of international law.Two of our clients were removed from the list of those to be flown to Rwanda after pre-action correspondence with the Home Office. One was removed from the list after the issuing of judicial review proceedings. The fourth was taken off the list following an application to the European Court of Human Rights.

We also assisted Asylum Aid with case studies and a witness statement in their challenge to the policy.Our clients now await the outcome of the High Court hearings in July as to the lawfulness of the policy being brought by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS),Detention Action and Care4Calais.This case raises important issues as to the UK’s international obligations to those seeking asylum.We thank the Supreme Court for making clear in their judgment on Tuesday 14^th June that lawyers are “performing their proper function” in bringing these cases to court.We believe in justice for all, and we will continue to represent migrants facing removal who are entitled to legal representation under British law. We would like to thank the barristers who assisted us with the individual cases; Alasdair Mackenzie, Leonie Hirst, Shu Shin Luh, of Doughty Street Chambers, and Ali Bandegani of Garden Court ChambersAnd our team members who represented the individual clients; Daniel Merriman, Imogen Townley, Jed Pennington, Rebecca Kuehler and Tim Davies.

‍We would also like to thank all the other solicitors, barristers, and organisations representing individual clients for the collaborative way in which they have worked on this issue.