LAWYERS have rejected Priti Patel's "mission" to make it easier to deport foreign offenders in the UK after last-minute legal challenges saw each person cost the taxpayer around £30,000 to send to Jamaica.
Writing in the Mail Online, the Home Secretary said she made "no apology" for deporting foreign criminals and pressed for a change in the law to prevent the late legal challenges.
She said: "Allowing them to remain should be a stain on the consciousness of our nation."
She also wrote about why 43 out of the 50 people who were set to be deported weren't: "This is because the current system and laws allowed an influx of legal claims – litigation to stop the removal of 43 offenders whose prison sentences shockingly ran to a combined total of 245 years."
READ MORE: Scots judge pans Priti Patel's Home Office as child, 2, kept from parents
But opposition parties and lawyers hit back at Patel, pointing to the Windrush Scandal where at least 83 people were wrongfully deported - saying the Home Office's judgement cannot be trusted.
They added that legal challenges are rightfully part of the UK's court system, expressing concern over any attempt to circumvent people's right to appeal.
Patel has faced challenges in her time at the Home Office, with crossing over the English Channel skyrocketing and opposition parties labelling her approach as "racist".
There have also been rumours she is set to be replaced with Michael Gove after Boris Johnson was said to be unhappy with her performance.
Andy Sirel, partner and legal director at JustRight Scotland, said: “Priti Patel’s column in the Daily Mail unapologetically celebrates the deportation of 7 people from the UK to Jamaica, and points out that 43 other people scheduled to be deported had their deportation cancelled (or delayed) due to successful legal action.
"She says the law itself is to blame for this outcome – without explaining how exactly – and pushes readers to support her new Borders and Nationality Bill 2021.
"There is another way to look at this situation: deportation flights are costly and reflect a failure by the Home Office to remove people from the UK by any other means.
"Of the 50 people the Home Office tried to deport yesterday, 43 of them had a good reason to remain in the UK, and that reason was recognised as a lawful argument that should be fairly heard by an independent UK court, in each individual case.
"That is the only way a deportation can be 'stopped' within our justice system. Yesterday’s deportation flight could be seen, in another light, as a failure of the Home Office to correctly assess the merits of the legal cases of 43 of the 50 people they sought to deport to Jamaica."
Sirel poured doubt on whether the public could trust the Home Office in light of the Windrush Scandal.
"Yet this is the same government department which admits that it previously wrongly deported at least 83 people to Jamaica, and destroyed the lives of many more black Britons in the UK, during the Windrush scandal," he said.
"Indeed, children and grandchildren of Windrush generation Jamaican-British nationals (who themselves have the right to British nationality) were among the people due to be deported yesterday.
"It must be uncontroversial to say that if you arrive in the UK at the age of 12, or indeed were born and have lived here your whole life, the justice system should apply equally to you as it does to British citizens.
"These children are for all intents and purposes British, but not in the eyes of the law. Instead, they face an adult life where they can be indefinitely detained simply for not being British.
"The justice system treats them differently: they are punished twice. Instead of being imprisoned, rehabilitated if possible, and released back into society where appropriate, they are imprisoned and, after serving their sentence, exiled to a country they do not remember or have never set foot in.
"They leave behind their children and families who are most often British. This would not have happened if these people had applied – at some stage – for British citizenship."
Sirel said that even when immigrants are able to, applying for British citizenship is a long and expensive process.
"Many families cannot afford to do this, and their children – unbeknownst to them – become undocumented as a result," he said.
"We are not advocating for preferential treatment, simply equal treatment. Punishment in a just society should be based on the severity of the crime and the risk to the public, not whether a particular immigration status was obtained as a child.
"This discrimination is baked into the statute books and Priti Patel’s Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 only aims to make this worse.”
Today’s deportation charter flight to Jamaica shows that the Tories have learnt nothing from the Windrush scandal.
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) August 11, 2021
The Home Office’s deeply cruel practices shame us all.
It’s time for @pritipatel to stop these mass charter flights and end the Hostile Environment for good.
The Scottish Greens called on the Home Office to be "abolished" and devolved to Scotland.
The party's justice and human rights spokesperson Maggie Chapman said: “Priti Patel is completely disingenuous to describe the actions of the institutionally racist and cruel Home Office or her proposals to stop people appealing as ‘fair’.
"In fact, people are being stripped of their rights and dignity to serve an increasingly right-wing agenda. Any fair system, be it immigration or justice, must include the right to appeal, and if those appeals are upheld, that should be honoured, not used as evidence that the system doesn’t work.
“The Home Secretary’s attempts to frame this around criminals is no more than a smokescreen.
"We know her Nationality and Borders Bill has an overtly racist agenda which will make the situation far worse for those fleeing war and persecution, as well as those who have lived in the UK for years.
"She appears to want to replicate the Windrush scandal on a massive scale. Priti Patel is presiding over the most discriminatory immigration policies in decades, and Labour have failed to hold her to account on this.
"That is why we need to abolish the Home Office and devolve all immigration policy to Scotland so we can have no part in this disgraceful agenda.”
Meanwhile, Usman Aslam, senior solicitor at Rea Law Solicitors, explained how many people are pushed into last-minute legal appeals.
He said: "People are pushed into last-minute claims. For example, if someone is trying to build a case to show they are facing persecution at home, or that they do have a family in the UK, be it a child, or parent, cannot do so if they are put in detention.
"This naturally forces one to have to put together something 'last minute'.
"Perhaps the public should be served with the real figures of migration, that I have tried to address many times.
READ MORE: Priti Patel must be vilified for disgusting behaviour in Ugandan child case
"The figures tell a very different story. Taxpayer money should be used properly, and not for political points."
He added: "This is in my own view, politics over law, and as a nation we ought to be ashamed.
"Using misleading quotes in respect of immigration & asylum matters, like the one by the Secretary of State in respect of the Jamaica flight will not win in the long term and the British public deserves better."
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
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