What does a foreign sex offender have to do to get deported?

An immigration tribunal in the UK has ruled that a Jamaican rapist cannot be deported to his homeland not in spite of his terrible crimes, but because of them.

The Jamaican national, known only as ‘CP’, has an extensive rapsheet. According to the Telegraph, he entered the UK as a ‘visitor’ in 2001 and sought asylum in 2006. While his case was pending, he was imprisoned in 2009 after being convicted of both unlawful wounding and burglaries. In 2013, he was jailed for rape and was then recalled to prison in 2022 after his release.

Judges in the upper tribunal of the immigration courts ruled last month that CP faces a ‘real risk’ of harm from criminal gangs should he be deported to Jamaica. This is because, when he was a teenager, he was placed under a witness-protection programme in his home country with his mother, who was a police informant. However, his criminal record is now so extensive that, if he were sent back to Jamaica, he would likely be barred from gaining witness protection again there. According to the tribunal, this would breach his rights under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). For good measure, the judges also ruled that his mental-health issues needed to be taken into account.

Once again, we see Britain’s immigration judges prioritising the safety and wellbeing of a foreign criminal over that of law-abiding citizens. Our membership of the ECHR, in particular, continues to be a gift for sex offenders who want to avoid deportation.

Take the case of the Congolese paedophile, known as ‘MD’. In 2020, he was imprisoned for three years for offences such as sexual penetration and sexual assault against his stepdaughter and two other young girls in his family. Back in November, the Telegraph reported that he had been allowed to remain in the UK on human-rights grounds. Despite the depraved nature of his crimes, an immigration tribunal ruled that removing him from the UK would breach his ‘right to family life’, as enshrined in Article 8 of the ECHR. Apparently, deportation would have had a negative impact on the wellbeing of MD’s wife and their three biological children (who were not victims of the sexual offences).

Similarly, a Romanian national who hid the fact that he had a rape conviction in his homeland was also able to use human-rights law to avoid deportation. ‘ZA’ served almost seven years in jail for rape in Romania and was also wanted for a driving offence in Bucharest when he absconded to Britain. At an initial extradition hearing, a judge ruled that it was in the public interest to deport him, but the High Court later heard that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder linked to his time in prison. Supposedly, the likelihood of him returning to the Romanian prison system meant ‘extradition would be oppressive and incompatible with Article 8 of the ECHR’. Never mind that Romania is a safe, democratic country – and even a fellow signatory to the ECHR.

British judges, armed with the ECHR, seem to be finding ever more spurious reasons to block dangerous foreign criminals from being deported. Indeed, as the case of the Jamaican rapist shows, an extensive criminal record can actually be treated as grounds for keeping someone in the UK. Public safety doesn’t seem to play any role whatsoever in these decisions.

Britain’s woefully lax borders, dysfunctional human-rights regime and activist judiciary are putting the British public at an intolerable risk of harm. What does a sex offender have to do these days to get himself deported?

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.