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This comes 5 months after a blockade at Stansted Airport prevented another similar plane departing, that struck a massive blow to Home Office proceedings.
In the last few weeks, hundreds of individuals previously released on bail and temporary admission have been detained, in a deliberate act to prepare for this charter flight to West Africa. Regularly herding individuals from these hand-picked countries onto huge planes for mass deportations needs to stop. Many individuals have ongoing immigration cases, many cannot afford to pay the huge legal fees to regularise their stay, and most have children and partners here and strong ties to the UK.
Detainees are calling for raised public awareness of how they are treated and the use of charter flights. One detainee stated: “It’s about 90 per cent of us that don’t want to go, the other 10 per cent don’t want to go either but they are tired of being humiliated so they say they are ready.”
The Home Office’s deportation machine did unfortunately manage to right itself, with another 14 Charter Flights having gone since the end of March, all of which are listed below. The dates listed below, are not all exactly accurate, but all the dates do however represent a flight that has gone.
This inaccuracy is because as the Home Office, since the blockade, have been refusing to release the exact dates and details of Charter Flights in advance, opting instead to issue people with what are known as limited Notice of Removal, which just outlines a window of time the Charter Flight could depart in. This added level of secrecy causing yet more difficult for those trying to find a legal remedy to challenge their removal.
It was also announced yesterday that another flight is set to leave to Albania next week.
1st August: Albania
17th July: Germany*
12th July: Albania
4th July: Pakistan
28th June: Nigeria and Ghana
21st June: Albania
12th June: Germany
30th May: Albania
23rd May: Nigeria
16th May: Pakistan
2nd May: Albania
25th April: Ghana
18th April: Pakistan
11th April: Germany
* The flights to Germany represent the use of Charter Flights to remove people on-mass as part of the Dublin III Regulations. Which limits people’s freedom of movement and choice by saying you have to claim asylum in the first safe country you were in. Whilst commercial removals to other ‘safe’ countries in Europe happens regular, the use of Charter Flights is a new as of this year. If anyone has any more information about these flights, please contact unitycentremedia@gmail.com
What is a charter flight, and who is on one?
Following on from their brilliant 2013 report, “Collective Expulsion: the case against mass deportation charter flights”, Corporate Watch have produced a new factsheet to provide updating information on the mass deportations carried out by the UK government.
“Mass deportations on chartered aircraft are only one small part of the deportation system. Many more people are “removed”, either “voluntarily” or with a guard of “escorts”, on standard scheduled flights. But in many ways charters are the system’s most brutal and terrifying instrument, taking place away from the public gaze in secretive night flights.”
The factsheet covers an overall snapshot of deportations; the basics of charter flights; what charter flights are for and how they work. The factsheet then goes on to outline private companies’ involvement in the process, with information about the “muscle” (Tascor/Capita), the “fixer” (Carlson Wagonlit Travel) and the “supplier” (Titan Airways).
“Charter flights” refer to the well-established Home Office practice of hiring a whole (private) aircraft to forcibly remove multiple people against their will at one time – most commonly around 60-80 people (but can be up to 100). The only people on these flights are deportees* and security guards, without independent monitoring or documentation of what takes place on the way to the airport, during the flight, and after landing.Known Home Office charter flights currently operate to Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Albania, whilst it looks incredibly likely that charter flights will start up again to Afghanistan. These charter flights have been known to stop off in other countries within the EU, such as Belgium, to pick up more detainees on the way.
These mass deportations are often used to forcibly remove people to countries which receive few commercial flights from the UK – because they are countries it is considered especially dangerous to fly to – and therefore countries which people may be especially scared to return to, demonstrated by the story of one woman who swallowed all of the medication she had instantly upon landing in Nigeria.
Bimonthly charter flights to Nigeria and Ghana (named “Operation Majestic” by the Home Office) are often made up of a mixture of people who have had their asylum claims rejected by the Home Office (whilst some still have ongoing claims), people who may have spent their whole life in the UK but lack British citizenship, and, after being convicted for a crime and serving a prison sentence longer than 12 months, are subsequently transferred to immigration detention and given deportation orders to a country they know nothing about and may have never lived in, and people who are labeled as “overstayers” by the Home Office.
Many on charter flights have been given the “right” to appeal once they have been deported, which is used by the Home Office to in part to justify the use of charter flights. From The Unity Centre’s experience of continued contact with individuals given out of country appeal rights, it is clear that these circumstances essentially mean that an individual has no right of appeal, given the enormous obstacles that stand in the way. The Unity Centre is currently is contact with at least one individual who is pursuing an out of country appeal – who, upon being forcibly removed to Bangladesh, is street homeless and severely ill – meaning that he is unable to even afford enough phone credit to call a lawyer in the UK.
Individuals that The Unity Centre have been in contact with over the past years on charter flights range from people who have lived in the UK for over 20 years with their partner, children and whole family here, to people who were forcibly removed to a country which was not their country of origin, to people who are torture survivors and should not lawfully be detained or removed, to people who were put onto charter planes despite how their serious mental and physical meant that it was highly dangerous for them to fly. One detainee with removal directions for May 24th came to the UK aged 14, but the Home Office failed to recognise him as a dependent of his mother (who now has British citizenship), and now faces leaving her, his siblings and long-term partner – with whom he was moving in with when he was detained. Charter flights enable individuals with extremely convincing reasons for staying in the UK to be removed en mass with very few questions asked.
[*Whilst deportation traditionally refers to the forced removal and double punishment of someone with a criminal conviction and without British citizenship, the terms “deported” and “forcibly removed” are used interchangeably here, in the belief that deportation cannot be justified by the fact that someone has committed a crime they have already “served their time” for. Deporting “high numbers” of foreign national offenders is often used by the Home Office in an attempt to justify the use of charter flights – despite how the number of FNOs is significantly low compared to the number of removal directions issued.]
Why does the Home Office use charter flights?In an article in The Telegraph (2009), David Wood (then current UK Border Agency Director of Enforcement) explained why the Home Office began using charter flights in 2001: “It was a response to the fact that some of those being deported realised that if they made a big enough fuss at the airport – if they took off their clothes, for instance, or started biting and spitting – they could delay the process. We found that pilots would then refuse to take the person on the grounds that other passengers would object. So although we still use scheduled flights, we use special flights for individuals who are difficult to remove and might cause trouble.”
Whilst Wood’s assertion that charter flights are used specifically for difficult individuals, it is clear that charter flights are used only for individuals of a certain nationality – and that this is what defines the people on a charter flight. The Home Office does not gather together identified “difficult” detainees, but rather collects people from the same “country of origin” – regardless of how these people are at completely different stages within the asylum/immigration system. For example, George was forcibly removed last July, in spite of having more than a week left to appeal the refusal of his EEA application to remain in the UK with his pregnant partner.
This practice raises questions about collective expulsion – that the policy of using charter flights to remove people en masse may breach human rights law, as it targets specific nationalities in order to fill up seats on charter flights – as argued by Corporate Watch, Right to Remain, and The Unity Centre. This leads the Home Office to remove people who may still have active legal claims, rather than ensuring that the appropriate legal avenues and requirements have been exhausted and adhered to. The Unity Centre is in contact with at least one detainee with a seat on the charter flight departing May 24th who lacks legal representation – and has been told that he won’t be able to access legal advice within the detention centre until the day before the charter flight.
Charter flights are incredibly difficult to challenge, specifically due to the simple fact that they are specially chartered by the Home Office; for example, in a letter addressed to an individual facing forced removal in 2014, the Home Office states that due to the “effort and expense” of a charter flight, a judicial review (of Home Office practice – which has been successful for over 36% people seeking asylum) may not necessarily defer forced removal. In doing so, the Home Office simultaneously contradicts its own assertion that charter flights are cost-effective (the average cost per person being removed in 2015 was over £5000). Whilst Detained Fast Track was ruled unlawful, from speaking to detainees it is clear that similar barriers to accessing justice through legal representation persist – and that the Home Office is deliberately using its powers to limit those that most need legal protection.
Wood’s claim that “difficult” detainees necessitate “special flights” directly implies the misuse of force and violence on charter flights. In arguing that commercial flights are problematic for forcibly removing people successfully, Wood indicates how security guards and immigration officers on board charter flights are able to abide by different rules and break Home Office policy when enforcing removal, away from public scrutiny (the flights do not appear on airport flight schedules, and detainees do not know the whereabouts of departure). If practices of restraint are excessive and violent enough to kill Jimmy Mubenga on a commercial British Airways flight, what are they like on a private charter?
What happens in the lead up to and during a charter flight?
We often do not know what takes place on a charter flight, which is precisely the Home Office’s aim! Beginning in 2001, charter flights continued for a decade before independent inspectors were allowed on board in 2011 (and has happened twice since then: in 2013 and 2015). Upon return, many go into hiding in fear for their lives, are immediately street homeless, or may be taken straight to prison from the airport – and thus it is incredibly difficult to maintain contact with people who have been deported.
However, we do know that, a few days before the scheduled flight, detainees are moved to detention centres situated around London; they are locked up in solitary confinement the night before (and often before that) – believed to be an attempt by the Home Office to avoid collective resistance to removal. One detainee awaiting forced removal on a charter flight to Pakistan said: “Yesterday we moved to short stay side of the centre because of our flight, they closed our room door at 8pm and then didn’t open…I can’t stay one more night in that room, I am sure I will die because the room is so small and we are two boys in there and the air in the room is not enough for two people.”
In the afternoon, detainees are taken (often with force) from detention, handcuffed, and put onto coaches bound for the airport. “Reserve” detainees are kept on coaches, unaware if they are being put on the plane or not until after the flight has actually left – demonstrating the Home Office’s clear emphasis on filling the flight regardless of detainees’ individual cases. Standard practice is that each person facing removal is accompanied by two security guards (contracted to companies such as Tascor and G4S); so, for a flight forcibly removing 80 people, there would be 160 guards present. Handcuffed detainees are forced onto the plane under the threat of violence, often with unnecessary and excessive wrist and waist restraint belts, which are often kept on continuously for the whole journey, with head restraints for those who attempt to resist (brought in following the death of Jimmy Mubenga in 2010). One independent report found that the use of waist restraints, which circulate around the entire body and hold one’s hands and arms firmly by one side, is not according to the Home Office guidelines of exceptional circumstances – but have instead become routine – not only for those who resist, but for those who do not too.
There are serious concerns that deportees may be sedated, after The Unity Centre received a distressing call last year from a Nigerian national held in Dungavel detention centre, who experienced this form of restraint after he was reportedly assaulted by seven guards. He also reported having a pill forced into his mouth once the restraint was in place on his body. As a result of the force used and severe pressing on his chest he was admitted to the emergency room. One detainee reported the use of these devices as an “everyday thing”, stating that detention centre staff “use it all the time and people regularly get injured from them.” Clearly, no one resisting on a charter flights wants to “delay the process” as Wood argues (and as a result spend longer imprisoned in immigration detention); rather, they are extremely fearful of being forcibly returned to a country from which they previously fled, or have strong reasons to want to remain in the UK.
In the case of Nigeria, once the plane has landed at the naval base in Lagos – after hours and hours of travelling – aggressive Nigerian immigration officials conduct lengthy individual interviews at the front of the plane, with no confidentiality. Individuals are made to go through the frightening and degrading process of Nigerian immigration officials demanding bribes in order to let them go. In many cases, police officers (of the country of destination) enter the plane upon landing, and using force, eject anyone who is reluctant to leave the cabin and enter a country they once fled from, or never step foot in before.
Step 1. High politics
Charter flight routes are agreed between the UK and other states at the highest political and diplomatic levels. For example, the first in the new wave of charters to Pakistan took place in November 2011, not long after a visit by then prime minister David Cameron to negotiate a new “Enhanced Strategic Dialogue”, which included an objective of increasing bilateral trade to £2.5 billion per year as well as a £650 million “education aid” programme. The flight itself took place on the same day of a visit to Pakistan by then home secretary Teresa May. The first flight to Ghana took place in the same month, just a few weeks after a visit by then Immigration Minister Damian Green. (See Corporate Watch: Collective Expulsion p19).
Step 2. The routine is fixed
For the main destinations – Pakistan, Kosovo/Albania, Afghanistan, and Nigeria / Ghana – flights appear to be scheduled at more or less regular intervals. E.g., for some years, Afghan migrants and their friends knew to expect a fortnightly or monthly charter to Kabul – with arrests made to fill up the numbers. Almost all charter flights take place on a Tuesday or Thursday, and are generally spaced so that there is at most one a week.
In 2014 and 2015, there was a charter to Pakistan at least every month, with the one exception of November 2015. The flights were almost (but not quite) always on a Tuesday, and typically every three weeks
In 2014 and 2015, there was usually a monthly flight to Kosovo / Albania, and sometimes two in one month. Through much of 2014 these flights were generally on Fridays, but then switched to Thursday as the regular day.
In 2015, there was a flight to Nigeria and Ghana at the end of every other month (in January, March, May, July, September, November). They were always on a Tuesday, either eight or nine weeks apart.
Flights to Afghanistan became much less regular over this period, and there were only three in 2015. Still, they were always on Tuesdays.
Step 3. Filling up the flights: the “National Removals Command”
Getting people onto these flights is part of the job of the Home Office’s “Immigration Enforcement” division. This division was set up in 2012/13 when the Home Office split the functions of the former UK Border Agency (UKBA), and it is in charge of all “enforcement” roles within the territory as opposed to at the frontiers: i.e., raids, detention, and deportation.
In July 2013, the Home Office set up a central unit called “National Removals Command” (NRC) within the Immigration Enforcement division. This unit, based in Croydon’s Lunar House, is in charge of arranging detention and deportation of “illegals”, as well as running the “assisted voluntary return” scheme. To do this it liaises with the Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE) teams who carry out raids and arrests on the ground.
The official procedure is basically as follows. First, “illegal migrants” are picked up in ICE raids (e.g., dawn raids on homes, workplace raids, raids on “sham marriages”, etc.), or when reporting at a signing centre, or perhaps by the police. The arrest team contacts NRC, who give the order whether or not the person should be detained. Once in detention, NRC decides how and when to deport the detainee, including whether they should be put on a charter flight.
In reality, we know that NRC has spaces to fill on the charter flights, and this will affect how they decide about which people to target and detain. We believe it likely that:
ICE teams may have standing instructions to find and arrest quotas of migrants from the regular “charter nationalities”, i.e., at the present time, Pakistanis, Albanians, Nigerians and Ghanaians. Home Office statistics show that these nationalities are particularly hit by deportations – although it is hard to show whether the existence of regular charter routes is a cause or a result (or both?) of this.
If a specific less regular charter flight is planned, e.g., the recent flight to Jamaica, ICE teams may be given specific instructions to round up people of these nationalities in the weeks running up to the flight. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of this pattern.
Why does the UK government use charter flights to enact mass deportations?
The fact sheet lays out the motivations for this policy: meeting targets, stifling rebellion, as a so-called “deterrent”, and as a foreign policy tool.
The UK began using charter deportations in 2001. From the beginning, they have targeted a handful of countries, mainly those symbolically identified with the “refugee crisis”, and with the UK’s war machine. The first flights were to Kosovo and Albania. Romania and the Czech Republic soon followed, with Roma people the main targets of these deportations. In 2003 charters began to Afghanistan, newly declared “safe”. For the next nine years, the majority of flights were to Kosovo / Albania and Afghanistan.
More recently, Pakistan has taken over as the UK government’s main charter “partner”, after a landmark deal was struck with the Pakistani government in 2011, as part of a larger trade and aid negotiation. African countries have also now became regular destinations, notably Nigeria, Ghana and (until recently) the Democratic Republic of Congo. September 2016 also saw a charter flight to Jamaica, the first since 2014.
Flights have ceased, at least for the meantime, to Iraq and Sri Lanka, after successful political and legal campaigns involving refugee movements from these countries. In the case of Iraq, organised opposition in the destination country was a major factor, which led to the Iraqi parliament and Iraqi Kurdish authorities refusing to accept deportees.
Flights to Afghanistan have also stopped for the moment, but they continue from other European countries, and many fear they will also soon resume from the UK.
Legal challenges to charter flights
The 2013 Corporate Watch report made a strong case for the policy in itself being unlawful.
Individuals seeking to halt their removal/deportation by charter flight will normally need an injunction to do so. This is difficult to achieve without legal representation.
What is the role of the receiving country?
The consent of the country (to which detainees face deportation to) is required in order to issue detainees with emergency travel documents, and allow detainees to disembark upon arrival. Movement for Justice have drawn attention to the importance of targeting receiving countries’ embassies and high commissions, calling on the Nigerian government to refuse to accept charter flights and allow them to land.
The Nigerian High Commission states that “before any Nigerian is deported, the High Commission always insists that: their citizenship has been proved beyond reasonable doubt; they are medically fit; they are allowed to exhaust all their legal remedies; for those who have stayed in the UK for more than 15 years, proof of existence of friends and relations as well as capacity to reintegrate.”
This statement can be understood to be completely false, as the Nigerian government is paid by the Home Office to interview people in detention and issue them with emergency travel documents – even when these conditions have not been met. The corruption of the Nigerian Government by the UK was alluded to by David Cameron himself. The Unity Centre has seen copious numbers of individuals that fail to meet these requirements. Ola (not his real name) was born in Belgium (with a Belgium birth certificate), and had lived in the UK for 17 years before he was deported last November to Nigeria – despite having no connections to the country (with no family or records there), and the fact that the Nigerian High Commission previously refused to issue travel documents for him in 2013. Detainees are often identified as Nigerian by the High Commission based on arbitrary indicators such as the markings on their face. In some cases, it has even been acknowledged by the Nigerian High Commission that individuals being issued with travel documents are not Nigerian, as one detainee said he was greeted by Mrs. Ngere, a Deputy Immigration Officer, as her “Eritrean brother”.
The Unity Centre has been in contact with individuals who have been so unsuitable to fly that, in one instance, a detainee was taken to the airport in an ambulance, and subsequently deported on a charter flight. Upon request of the Home Office, the Nigerian High Commission issue travel documents to individuals (both inside and outside of detention) regardless of what stage they have reached in their immigration case – demonstrating their disregard of whether someone has “exhaust[ed] all their legal remedies” or not. Whilst the Nigerian High Commission claims to examine the relations someone may hold to the country they face deportation to, theyfail to acknowledge the immediate family members one has in the UK, such as a partner and children. Ray (not his real name) stated: “Immigration Judges tell us we can maintain our family life over Skype. But how can you take your child to school through Skype? How can you have a relationship with your wife over Skype?”
What you can do!
The Unity Centre calls on all supporters to take immediate action to show opposition to the scheduled charter flight to Nigeria and Ghana and voice opposition to the presumed airline, Titan Airways. In choosing to take contracts with the Home Office, Titan Airways is complicit in forcibly removing people from the UK against their will, profiting from the violence and assault that takes place on board. It is necessary for this company to understand that there is strong opposition to the racist immigration policies they facilitate through operating these charter flights.
Charter flights are much more difficult than commercial flights for individuals facing deportation (or those surrounding) to resist, so anything anyone who is not on the flight is able to do can really make a difference.
– Direct action! Anything to delay the coaches and flight, as gaining time for people with removal directions means that their solicitor may have time to legally act to stop them from being removed. There are instances where detainees have not been deported, simply because there is not enough time to take everyone on the list from detention to the airport, and so some are left behind in order to avoid further delay.
– Target receiving countries! Protest and bombard Embassies and High Commissions, and tell them not to give the UK government authorisation and access to land charter flights. Tell the Nigerian High Commission that we know that they do not adhere to their own requirements for issuing travel documents, and that they must be responsible for checking that the UK government act lawfully in deporting people.
– Campaign against Titan Airways! Titan Airways has won the BACA Best Passenger Charter Airline Award on multiple occasions “and today has the prestigious reputation of the Airline of Choice for a wide variety of air charter services worldwide.” Tell Titan Airways to not collude with the Home Office in forcibly removing people against their will and not to be complicit in the violence that takes place on these charter flights. As in Germany, enough campaigning could force the airline to abandon this contract, and discourage other airlines from building relationships with the Home Office.
– Publicise that this charter flight is taking place! In line with the Home Office’s aims, most people don’t know that regular ghost flights leave the UK, sending people to countries they are scared to return to, or may have never known, and violently taking them away from family and lives in the UK.
Solidarity with all those being deported to Ghana and Nigeria tonight.
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