Activists have urged the Home Office to halt their plans to deport dozens of British residents to Jamaica on the day the UK’s national lockdown ends.
The pre-Christmas scheduled flight, which has capacity for up to 50 detainees, has sparked accusations of institutional racism from campaigners across social media.
Karen Doyle, national organiser of immigration rights group Movement for Justice, has accused the UK Criminal Justice system of having a “deeply unfair and racist system of deportations”.
However, the Home Office appears resolute in their decision to remove whom they call “dangerous criminals” from the country in a statement to The Independent.
The Home Office declined to comment but a spokesperson told The Independent that among the people being detained for this flight were “convicted murderers and rapists”.
Doyle said that many of those being detained “have been here since childhood and have extensive families here in the UK.” They face deportation to a country “many barely remember and most have no connection with any more”.
She also argued that the majority of the detainees were facing deportation for drug offences. This is “one of the areas most recognised as producing disproportionate sentencing of black men”.
In January, the Sentencing Council revealed that Black offenders were 1.4 times more likely to be sentenced for drug offences than a white offender.
On Twitter, the organisation posted that “there are 31 British children who will see their father deported on 2nd December”.
It is still unclear how many offenders will be deported on this flight.
The planned flight has been met with national outcry across social media, which saw the hashtag ‘#stoptheplanes’ trending on Twitter in the UK on Thursday.
Ninety high profile public figures, including author Bernadine Evaristo and actor Thandie Newton, have also signed an open letter by human rights organisation Detention Action urging airlines to drop next week’s deportation.
Prominent political figure Diane Abbott has also voiced her concerns about the deportations. “Some have lived here since they were children, many are now fathers themselves,” Abbott said.
“Due to Covid restrictions, they can’t say goodbye to loved ones in person.”
Very concerned about this deportation flight.
Some have lived here since they were children, many are now fathers themselves.
Due to covid restrictions, they can’t say goodbye to loved ones in person.
I urge @ukhomeoffice to #StopDeportations until the pandemic is over https://t.co/EjUy6ZzFL0
— Diane Abbott MP (@HackneyAbbott) November 24, 2020
A petition by antiracism and migrants rights advocacy group BARAC UK calling for the UK government to end “mass deportations” has received over 150,000 signatures as of November 26. One of the signatories called the deportations “cruel and unacceptable.
“The UK has a duty and responsibility to support the families of the Windrush generation,” the signatory said.
BARAC UK co-founder and petition creator Zita Holbourne wrote in an article for gal-dem that many of the detainees “will only have a single historic offence on their records. Some are the victims of county lines networks and others sentenced under now defunct joint enterprise law”.
“It has been a traumatic year for Black people. Our energy has been truly spent”.
Has the Home Office learned nothing from the Windrush scandal? This is shameful & the deportation should be cancelled#stoptheplane #lessonslearned https://t.co/Wq6BHhpj8u
— Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) November 26, 2020
This concern is especially heightened due to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions when international travel is being discouraged. Also, ONS findings this year that Black people are up to four times more likely to die from Covid-19 exacerbate the issue.
BARAC UK said in a Twitter thread on Wednesday, “On arrival at detention centre only temperature/were taken, no Covid tests, everyone is mixing, dining together, no social distancing.”
“There are no covid sanitation/cleaning measures,” the thread continued.
Doyle was similarly concerned that the Jamaican government had accepted the flights. “None of the men we’ve spoken to have had Covid tests, no PPE in detention”.
The deportation flight to Jamaica on December 2 will be the first since February. Mass deportations were paused due to the implementation of a national lockdown in spring.
At that time, the number of people being held in immigration removal centres dropped two-thirds as people were released in a bid to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The virus has killed more than 57,000 people in the UK.
On the UK government’s website, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office states that it currently “advises against all but essential travel to the whole of Jamaica based on the current assessment of COVID-19 risks”.
Families ‘torn apart’ before Christmas as Home Office plans deportation flight to Jamaica – Metro #StopThePlane #Jamaica50 #EndDeportations #EndDetention #YesItsRacist https://t.co/S0LXaZnLzZ
— Movement for Justice (@followMFJ) November 26, 2020
The backlash to the news of the deportation on Wednesday also emerged on the same day as a damning Equality and Human Rights Commission report was published. The report found that the Home Office broke equalities law by ignoring evidence that “hostile environment” immigration policy would lead to racial discrimination.
The report agreed with the Windrush Lesson Learned report in March of this year into the Windrush Scandal. Both reports found that the government repeatedly ignored and dismissed warnings of discrimination and failed to listen to members of Windrush generation.
It reported a lack of “organisation-wide commitment, including by senior leadership, to the importance of equality”.
Doyle noted that the mass deportation shed light on these systemic issues which Black and Asian communities have had to endure.
She said, “The Windrush Scandal opened the whole country’s eyes to something black and Asian communities have always known — the immigration system is racist and unjust.”
Under UK law, non-British citizens who are convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to 12 months or more in prison in the UK are eligible for deportation.