Rishi Sunak suffered a major blow Thursday after London judges ruled his attempt to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is unlawful, a decision that undermines his key pledge to show his Conservative government as being tough on immigration.
The Court of Appeal ruled against the government’s controversial plan that involves flying refugees who arrive in Britain on small boats some 4,000 miles (6,437.4 kilometers) to the central African nation for processing. Sending asylum seekers to Rwanda would violate the European Convention on Human Rights, which the government must comply with, the judges said in the split decision.
“The result is that the high court’s decision that Rwanda was a safe third country is reversed and that unless and until the deficiencies in its asylum processes are corrected removal of asylum-seekers to Rwanda will be unlawful,” they said.
Asylum seekers, backed by non-governmental organizations, challenged the policy in London condemning the move as authoritarian. A High Court judge backed the government program as lawful in December.
The planned flights to Rwanda — which were slated to take off from a military base in Wiltshire — were thwarted in June of last year after a last-minute intervention from the European Court of Human Rights.
The government is planning to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.
“While I respect the court I fundamentally disagree with their conclusions,” Sunak said in an emailed statement. “Rwanda is a safe country. The High Court agreed. The UNHCR have their own refugee scheme for Libyan refugees in Rwanda.”
Sunak’s contentious Illegal Migration Bill to stop the flow of small boats crossing the English Channel was voted through by politicians in the House of Commons in April and is now under scrutiny by the House of Lords. According to a government estimate earlier this week, the UK would have to spend £169,000 ($214,450) per person to deport the almost 11,000 people who have made the crossing so far this year.
“The Rwanda scheme is unworkable, unethical and extortionate, a costly and damaging distraction from the urgent action the government should be taking,” Yvette Cooper, the opposition Labour Party’s shadow home secretary, said .
The ruling implicitly criticizes the government for not taking steps to ensure that the Rwandan immigration and judicial system is compliant with conditions necessary to make it a “safe third country.” That is likely to fuel the sense that the government’s political ambitions are served just as much by the legal tussle as actual deportations. That has been a longrunning theme on the rightwing of the Conservative Party since the battles over Brexit.
The number of pending asylum application in the UK mounted to 133,607 as of March end. Three of every four pending applications have been awaiting an initial decision for more than six months.
“The deficiencies in the asylum system in Rwanda are such that there are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that persons sent to Rwanda will be returned to their home countries where they faced persecution,” the judges said.
Disagreeing with the majority decision, one of the judges concluded that the rules under the agreement and the assurances given by the Rwandan government are sufficient to ensure that asylum seekers are at no real risk.
--With assistance from Alex Morales.
(Updates throughout)
