Channel Boat Migrants Face ‘Illegal Entrant' Deportation

The Home Office has been threatening asylum seekers with deportation for alleged crimes they did not commit, it has emerged.

- Lizzie Dearden

A Court of Appeal judgment revealed the existence of “notices of liability to detention”, which were handed to migrants crossing the English Channel on small boats. The documents claimed they were “illegal entrants” and “may be liable to removal or deportation from the United Kingdom”.

“You are specifically considered an illegal entrant to the UK as you were encountered in a private vehicle, namely a RHIB [rigid-hulled inflatable boat], which had recently arrived in the UK from France,” the notices read. “You could not produce any travel document or provide any evidence of your lawful basis to be in the UK and have therefore entered the UK in breach of S.3(1)(a) of the Immigration Act 1971.”

But judges said the Home Office had misinterpreted the law and that crossing the Channel by dinghy to seek asylum did not amount to illegal entry. Evidence revealed during a successful appeal by asylum seekers who were wrongly jailed for steering small boats said “a number of the offiical documents” had been issued, and caused immigration interviews to “proceed on an erroneous basis”.

Judges found that a “heresy about the law” had originated among Home Office officials and been passed on to prosecutors, defence lawyers, and the courts – sparking several unlawful prosecutions.