UK immigration enforcement

House of Commons Library

Deportation of foreign national offenders

This Commons Library briefing paper provides an overview of the Home Secretary's powers to deport foreign criminals from the UK, related Government policy and Parliamentary and external scrutiny of the efficiency of current procedures.

Powers to deport foreign criminals

• People who are not British citizens are liable to deportation from the UK if the Home Secretary deems their deportation to be conducive to the public good.
• The UK Borders Act 2007 made provision for the automatic deportation of foreign criminals.
• The Home Secretary must make a deportation order in respect of a foreign criminal unless certain exceptions apply (e.g.where deportation would contravene the UKs obligations under the Refugee and Human Rights Conventions).
• The timeframe for the changes to be implemented will depend on the type of exit the UK has from the EU.

Appeals

• The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 sets out the considerations to which tribunals and courts must have regard when hearing an appeal by a foreign national offender against a deportation order.
• In July 2017 the Supreme Court found the deport first, appeal later rules to be unfair and unlawful.
• Originally applied only to foreign national offenders facing deportation from the UK, the approach was extended in 2016 so that any appellant challenging an immigration decision (other than in asylum cases) could be required to leave the UK.

Operation Nexus

• Operation Nexus is a joint operation between the Home Offices Immigration Enforcement Directorate and several police forces.
• Described as a means of more effectively tackling offending by foreign nationals, its focus was said to be on identifying highharm offenders.
• An unsuccessful legal challenge was brought by the AIRE Centre in 2017, and their subsequent appeal was dismissed in 2018.

Deportation with assurances

• As both the Refugee and Human Rights conventions prohibit deportation when there is a real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the receiving state, the UK has pursued a policy of deportation with assurances [DWA] in the cases of foreign nationals suspected of terrorism.
• The policy has been criticised by both human rights advocates and by those who feel the strict conditions imposed by the European Court of Human Rights infringe upon British sovereignty.
• His report, co-authored with Clive Walker QC, professor emeritus of criminal justice studies at Leeds University, was published in July 2017.

Scrutiny

• The Home Affairs Select Committee criticised the Home Offices decision to set targets for deportation in their 2018 report into the Windrush Generation.
• In its June 2016 report on the work of the Immigration Directorates, the Home Affairs Committee focussed on efforts to deport foreign national offenders with EU citizenship, concluding that the Government should have done better.
• In its response the Home Office argued that the number of foreign national offenders removed from the UK in 2015-16 was the highest since records began.
• The Committee noted in 2015 that over a third of failed deportations were within HomeOffice control.