UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak suffered a major defeat today, June 29, after London judges declared that his attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is illegal.
This decision had undermined his fundamental pledge to manifest his Conservative government as being rigid on immigration.
The Court of Appeal had ruled against the government’s contentious plan to fly refugees who arriving in Britain on small boats, about 6,437.4 km to Rwanda for processing.
According to the judges, transporting the asylum seekers to Rwanda would breach the European Convention on Human Rights, therefore making it unlawful.
The high court had ruled that Rwanda was no more a safe third country, at least until the deficiencies in its asylum processes are corrected.
Recall that the planned flights to Rwanda, originally scheduled to take off from a military base in Wiltshire had been derailed in June 2022, after a last-minute intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.
Meanwhile, the government is planning to appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court.
Sunak’s controversial Illegal Migration Bill to stem the flow of small boats crossing the English Channel had been approved and voted through by politicians in the House of Commons back in April but it is now under scrutiny by the House of Lords.
According to an estimate by the government earlier in the week, the UK would have to spend £169,000 (about $214,450) per individual, to deport the almost 11,000 people who have made the channel crossing so far this year.
The ruling had implicitly lambasted the government for not taking the steps to ensure that the Rwandan immigration and judicial system was amenable with the conditions necessary to make it a “secure third country.”
The number of pending asylum application in the UK had increased to 133,607 as at the ending of March 2023 and three of every four pending applications have been awaiting an initial decision for over six months.
The insufficiencies in the Rwandan asylum system are reportedly glaring, that there are significant grounds for believing that there are risks that individuals sent to Rwanda, will be turned over to their home countries where they had faced persecution, prior to seeking asylum.
