Charity launches legal action against Rwanda plan

A view of Hope Hostel, Kigali, Rwanda, where migrants to the UK are to be deported to – Getty/Cyrile Ndegeya

An asylum charity has launched the first blanket legal action against Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda plan to deport migrants.

Asylum Aid – which was party to the legal challenge that blocked the first flight to Rwanda two years ago – has begun proceedings against the Home Office over what it claims is an “unlawful” policy to send migrants to Rwanda.

It claims the Home Office’s instruction to its caseworkers to treat Rwanda as safe for asylum seekers conflicts with the Safety of Rwanda Act, which allows migrants to appeal their deportation on the grounds that the east African state could be unsafe.

In a pre-action letter sent to government lawyers, the charity said this inconsistency would lead to the Home Office failing to consider “compelling” evidence of the risk of harm for individual migrants if they were deported.

“It will impede our ability to properly advise our clients on their cases,” said the charity. “We are also concerned that the Home Office’s policy puts individuals who are unable to access effective legal representation at great risk.

“If the Home Office does not amend its policy, we intend to proceed with a judicial review to ask the High Court to rule on whether the Home Office has correctly interpreted the Rwanda Act when publishing its policy.”

The move comes two days after the union representing top civil servants also announced it would be seeking a judicial review of the Rwanda plan, which it claims could place its members in breach of international law.

Rishi Sunak is continuing to push the Rwanda plan to deport migrants – PA/Toby Melville

The FDA union said civil servants could be in violation of the civil service code – and open to possible prosecution – if they followed a minister’s demands to ignore an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) banning a deportation. Such an injunction blocked the first flight to Rwanda in June 2022.

The Home Office is also likely to face legal action from individual migrants who have been detained after being earmarked for deportation to Rwanda.

At least 100 have so far been detained and put in contact with lawyers in order to seek bail before the flights due in nine to 11 weeks and potentially to challenge their removal to Rwanda.

Alison Pickup, executive director of Asylum Aid, said: “There is a lack of information on when flights to Rwanda will take off and who will be on them, but the Government has made clear that it is determined to act quickly as we have already seen the Home Office carrying out forcible detentions.

“The panic this causes is made worse by the limited capacity to provide high-quality legal representation in the legal aid and charity sector.

“We have brought forward this legal action to ensure that the Home Office properly considers any individual cases against removal to Rwanda, including on the grounds that they would be returned from Rwanda to the place they fled.”

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