Mass deportation of drug offenders is a ‘cruel, racist, and disproportionate punishment’, says MP

The MP for Leicester East has called on the Government to cancel a mass deportation flight to Jamaica later this month.

In December 2020, after the Windrush scandal, a deal was struck between the Home Office and the Jamaica High Commission that those who came to the UK as children would not be sent ‘home’ on charter flights.

Claudia Webbe claims a deportation flight of people originally from Jamaica who have completed prison sentences for drug offending was breaking that deal.

According to information compiled by Movement for Justice, some of those facing deportation on Wednesday, August 11, came to the UK as children – five of them were under 12 – and all had served their full sentences.

The MP said the charter flight was not going to make people safer and would just ‘stoke the flames of racial hatred’.

Ms Webbe said: “The Government will once again try to say that this callous charter flight is about protecting the public from dangerous criminals. Yet this could not be further from the truth.

“Deportation flights have nothing to do with protecting the public.

“They force black people who have lived in the UK for decades into exile for what are often minor crimes, destroying their lives and that of their families in the process.

“Often, people are deported to countries they either have no memory of or traumatic experiences of horrific abuse.

“This is cruel, racist, and disproportionate punishment that is not designed to make Britain safer but instead designed to stoke the flames of racial hatred and division.

“The Government must cancel the upcoming deportation flight to Jamaica.”

A spokeswoman for the Home Office told LeicestershireLive: “We make no apology for seeking to remove those with no right to remain in the UK and dangerous foreign criminals.

“That is why we regularly operate charter flights to different countries – to remove foreign offenders, and those who have no right to be in the country but refused or failed to leave voluntarily.

“This flight is not linked to the Windrush Review or the wrongs that the Windrush Generation faced, none of those to be deported are British Citizens, British Nationals or members of the Windrush generation.

“Our new Nationality and Borders Bill will create an immigration system that is fair but firm, welcoming those in genuine need but cracking down on those who come to the UK illegally.”

The Windrush scandal erupted in 2018 when at least 83 British citizens, mostly from the Caribbean, were wrongly detained and deported despite having the right to live in Britain. Others were threatened with deportation or denied the right to return here.

Many lost homes and jobs and were denied access to healthcare and benefits.

The Empire Windrush was a ship that brought many Caribbean immigrants to the UK in 1948.

Claudia Webbe MP is the member of Parliament for Leicester East. You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe