More asylum seekers set to be deported on charter flights despite concerns over safety and legality

The Home Office is pressing ahead with the deportation of asylum seekers who have recently arrived to the UK in small boats, despite mounting concern about the safety and legitimacy of carrying out removals at a time when coronavirus rates across Europe are rising.

Two charter flights are set to remove asylum seekers to three EU countries next week under the Dublin regulation, a law that requires asylum seekers to claim asylum in the first safe country they arrive in.

Among the receiving countries are France, which is set to introduce quarantine measures for people arriving from the UK within days, and Germany, which recorded its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases last week.

A number of individuals who have arrived in the UK on small boats in recent months were taken from their asylum accommodation and detained in Brook House removal centre last Friday. They have since been informed that they will be deported either on a charter flight to both France and Germany on 25 August, or to Spain the following day.

Campaigners said the decision to pursue the removals amounted to an “affront to public health” and called on the home secretary to urgently review her plans to deport people under the Dublin regulation.

A separate Dublin removal flight destined for France and Germany took off last week with 14 asylum seekers on board. Nineteen people who were due to be on the flight did not board after last-minute legal intervention found that their removal could constitute a breach of their human rights.

Among those who had their deportation stayed were torture victims, people with severe PTSD and people who were at risk of homelessness and destitution on return to the EU country to which they were set to be removed.

Ammar, 24, a Yemeni national who was detained in Brook House on Friday after arriving by boat in March, is facing removal on the flight to Spain on the grounds that he claimed asylum there last year.

He told The Independent he was “forced” to try get to the UK because he was poorly treated within the Spanish asylum system.