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LONDON — Britain’s top court on Wednesday unanimously ruled against the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda — a goal sought by successive British prime ministers and watched by other countries hoping to outsource migration issues while skirting international human rights obligations.
The ruling brings some sense of relief to asylum seekers already in Britain who have received threatening letters from the government. It is also a huge embarrassment for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, leaving his flagship effort to “stop the boats” in tatters, ahead of what is expected to be a difficult election year.
The court decided: “There are substantial grounds for believing that the removal of the claimants to Rwanda would expose them to a real risk of ill-treatment,” namely that asylum-seekers could from there be returned to their country of origin, where they could face persecution.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Sunak said it was “not the outcome we wanted,” but that he would continue to seek a way to deport asylum seekers. He said his government was working on an agreement with Rwanda that would be “finalized in light of today’s judgment.” If that didn’t work, he said, he was prepared to change domestic laws and reconsider international conventions. “The British people expect us to do whatever it takes to stop the boats.”
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James Cleverly, Britain’s new home secretary, told Parliament that the government was working to “upgrade” its Rwanda policy to a treaty that would allay concerns by increasing capacity in Rwanda to hold more people while their claims are processed and building in assurances that people sent there cannot be deported to another country.
Cleverly noted that other European countries were also “exploring third-country models for illegal migration.” He cited Austria, Germany, Denmark and Italy.
Last year, more than 45,000 people crossed the English Channel from mainland Europe, often in flimsy, unseaworthy boats. Those numbers are aggravating to Britons who backed Brexit so their country could “take back control” of its borders. Sunak has made stopping the boats a central promise, with the Rwanda deportation plan the key element.
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Britain’s Illegal Migration Act 2023 seeks to prevent people entering Britain via unofficial means from applying for asylum here. The law places a legal duty on officials to detain and deport people back to their birth country, if that’s possible, or to a “safe third country,” including Rwanda, where their asylum claims can be processed. Once relocated, asylum seekers would be barred from ever entering Britain again.
The plan, which aspires to be something like Australia’s mandatory detention and offshoring, is more extreme than what other European government have so far tried to do.
The United Nations previously said that the British policy was at odds with international law and set “a worrying precedent for dismantling asylum-related obligations that other countries, including in Europe, may be tempted to follow.”
All five justices on the U.K. Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s ruling that the government’s plan was unlawful. The top court cited both domestic legislation and international conventions that protect refugees from being returned to countries where their life or freedom is threatened.
The ruling immediately fueled debate in Sunak’s Conservative Party about whether Britain should withdraw fully or partially from the European Convention on Human Rights — a treaty the country helped draft and was among the first to ratify.
Sonia Lenegan, an immigration lawyer, said the government may decide to keep its controversial migration law on the books, while the court ruling “forever delays” it from coming into effect.
Lenegan suggested that the ruling, while a loss for the government, may actually be what some officials wanted. “If they won, they have to actually implement legislation they passed,” she said. “But Rwanda will be at capacity after accepting a few hundred people. It’s hard to remove people when you have nowhere to remove them to.”
By losing the case, she said, “they will have someone else to blame for the fact they can’t make legislation work and the fact the boats aren’t stopping. They can blame the Supreme Court, they can blame lawyers. They can blame someone other than themselves.”