Anti-deportation campaigns

Campaigns to allow particular individuals, families or groups of people to stay in the UK

Help Luqman Onikosi

In 2007, Luqman Onikosi came to the UK from Nigeria to study at the University of Sussex. Whilst in the UK he developed chronic liver disease. After finishing his degree, he began to work in the Nigerian High Commission, before becoming to ill to continue work. In 2012, the Home Office attempted to deport Luqman. If he had been deported in all likelihood he would have died. Fortunately a successful campaign kept him in the country. Now the the Home Office is trying to deport him again. Support Luqman’s appeal for further legal advice, and a campaign to save his life. • Campaign to Stop the...

We all belong to Glasgow

The Glasgow girls, are a group of school students from Drumchapel High School in Glasgow, who in 2005 took it upon themselves to campaign for the release of their friend Agnesa Murselaj, a Roma girl from Kosovo who was detained by immigration police in a dawn raid. Agnesa’s whole family were placed in Yarls Wood detention centre and faced deportation back to a country where Roma people faced persecution. The area of Glasgow where she lived housed a large number of asylum seekers from across the globe, and many went to Drumchapel High. It was not uncommon for students at the school to disappear...

Immigration detainee protests spread

See also new video here . Events so far @ Wednesday 7 May 2PM. On Friday (2 May) over 150 detainees in Harmondsworth migration prison occupied the main courtyard in a sit down protest and began a mass hunger strike. On Monday (5 May) supporters held solidarity noise demos outside Harmondsworth and simultaneously at Dungavel (Scotlans). Yesterday evening (Tuesday 6 May) protests started to spread to Colnbrook and Brook House migration prisons. At lunchtime on Friday 2 May over 150 people detained in Harmondsworth, the UK's largest migration prison run by corporation GEO group for the Home...

Migrant solidarity news in brief

On 29 November, the Home Office attempted to deport Isa Muazu, a Nigerian refugee. Muazu had been on hunger strike for over 100 days against his detention at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre and was feared to be close to death. However, the privately-charted jet the Home Office hired to deport him was not allowed to land by Nigerian authorities, and Muazu is now back in the UK. The Home Office says that his deportation now has Nigerian approval and that they will try again. Muazu says returning to Nigeria would put him at risk from the Islamist militia Boko Haram, which he refused to...

Migrant and local: workers unite!

Six weeks before Romanian and Bulgarian workers will get unrestricted access to European labour markets, David Cameron has announced new benefit restrictions on all EU migrants. The initiative is, to borrow the word used by European Commissioner Laszlo Andor, “nasty”. It is also, to judge it in terms of bourgeois policy-making efficacy, nonsensical. Under the proposals, newly arrived EU jobseekers will not be able to claim any housing benefit ever, will not be entitled to out-of-work benefits for the first three months of residency, will not be able to claim benefits for more than six months...

How Jimmy Mubenga was killed

Angolan journalist Jimmy Mubenga repeatedly called for help during the 35 minutes he was handcuffed from behind and bent forwards in his aeroplane seat during an attempted forced deportation in 2010, an inquest has revealed. Despite the corroborating evidence of 21 other passengers and crew, the three G4S guards responsible for restraining him claim not to have heard him, and that he position he was in (with his head lower than the seat-back tray of the seat in front) was self-inflicted. It has also emerged that one of the guards forwarded racist jokes from his mobile phone before the incident...

Don't deport Fernanda Milan!

Fernanda Milan is a 22-year-old transgender woman and activist from Guatemala. In 2009, Fernanda fled persecution to seek safety and asylum in Denmark. Fernanda has now been told that Danish law does not recognise gender identity as a motive for persecution. This is despite a 2011 Directive of the European Parliament (2011/95/EU Article 10d), which specifically mentions gender identity as a reason for persecution. Fernanda has been informed she will be deported back to Guatemala on 17 September. During her detention in the Sandholmlejren Centre for asylum seekers, Fernanda suffered appalling...

Stop deportations at London Metropolitan University

Late on the evening of Wednesday 29 August, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) announced that London Metropolitan University was losing its “highly trusted sponsor” status. This means that in the eyes of UKBA, being a London Met student no longer makes you eligible to stay in Britain on a student visa. The right of the 2,600 non-EU students at London Met to remain in country has been stripped away with the stroke of a pen — the single biggest expulsion since Edward I's Edict of Expulsion which kicked out the Jews in 1290. The basic drive behind this unprecedented assault on international students in...

Thoughts on the London Met situation

This is a short commentary written by Workers' Liberty Student, Vice-President of the Liverpool Guild of Students 2011-12 and NCAFC National Committee member Bob Sutton. It has been produced in order to try and provoke discussion about how to best resist the deportations amongst activists this...

Fighting “kill the gays” bigotry

On Friday 15 June, LGBT rights activists staged a determined demonstration outside the Uganda High Commission in London. The rally, organised by the Movement for Justice, was protesting the UK’s deportation of Ugandan LGBT asylum seekers and the revival of the notorious “kill the gays” anti-homosexuality bill in Uganda. Protestors cheered when news came through that 22-year-old Ugandan lesbian Linda Nakibuuke had won her appeal for refugee status in the UK. Linda had been detained since 11 April by the UK Border Agency who planned to deport her despite being told that she had been tortured for...

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