A contentious British immigration policy was deemed to be legal by the High Court in London on Monday, months after the U.K. government initially announced its intention to deport hundreds of possible asylum applicants to Rwanda, where Rwandan authorities would hear and decide their claims.
The court determined that although the plan did not violate Britain’s legal responsibilities under domestic law and the UN Refugee Convention, the interior minister of the nation must now carefully consider the circumstances of individual asylum seekers if their cases are to be heard in Rwanda rather than the U.K.
The justices stated in their ruling that Priti Patel, a former interior minister who served under Boris Johnson’s administration, had applied the policy in a number of the cases the court took into consideration in a “flawed” manner.
After the policy was revealed in April, a number of legal challenges were brought by human rights organisations and immigration attorneys in Britain on the grounds that people seeking asylum in Britain would be subject to rights breaches by Rwandan authorities.
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After each person had the opportunity to contest the reasons for being expelled from Britain, some of them just minutes before their scheduled departure, the first chartered aircraft intended to transport dozens of migrants who were to be deported in the latter part of this summer left completely empty.
The increased number of migrants arriving in southern England by trucks or small boats from France has been a problem for the Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, as it was for those of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss before him this year.
