The former CEO of the Post Office has made a long-awaited appearance before a public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal. What did she know and when?
We hear from Fatima, who is currently detained in Yarl’s Wood for deportation to Rwanda. What will the upcoming election mean for the Rwanda policy – and for asylum seekers like her?
“Our compassion may be infinite but our capacity to help people is not. So from today our new migration and economic development partnership will mean that anyone entering the UK illegally as well as those who have arrived illegally since January the first may now be relocated to Rwanda”
That’s former Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking in April 2022.
The Rwanda plan was put forward to show that the Conservative Party had a strong hand on immigration and it quickly became a headline policy.
After two years, two more prime ministers and £290 million the government has not yet been able to forcibly deport an asylum seeker to the East African country.
And despite Rishi Sunak betting Piers Morgan £1000 otherwise.
It now looks like a flight to Rwanda won’t take off before UK voters head to the polls on July 4th.
“I can tell you the flights are booked for July airfields on standby the escorts are ready the case workers are churning through everything so all that is happening and if I’m reelected as your prime minister those flights will go to Rwanda ”
Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak
That is largely due to lawyers and activists successfully blocking flights.
But it doesn’t mean asylum seekers who have entered the UK haven’t felt the effects of the Rwanda plan.
In the week of the May local elections the Home Office launched a major operation to detain asylum seekers for relocation to Rwanda.
Videos put out on social media by the Home Office showed Border Force agents taking men from their homes to be detained in immigration centres.
But Tortoise has learnt that women who are known survivors of trafficking – and who came to the UK from countries like Iraq, Iran and Eritrea – were also detained.
“I am worried all the time in detention. I find it hard to sleep and eat.”
This is Fatima, one of the women who was taken to Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire. That’s not her real name and we’ve used an actor’s voice to protect her identity.
Fatima was told she could be sent from the UK to Rwanda as a “safe third country” – a place where the women’s life and liberty will not be threatened. But they are still fearful.
“Every day we are asked why we don’t want to go to Rwanda, which makes me feel even worse. We need the Government to have some humanity, and let us live peacefully, like we were being before we were detained.”
Andrea Vukovic is deputy director of the charity Women for Refugee Women which has been supporting Fatima and others.
“So the first woman who had been targeted for removal to Rwanda reached out to us from detention. She was detained when she went to report to her local Home Office Reporting Center which is a common practice for those who haven’t yet had a positive decision on their claim, and at that time she was served with a notice of intent which is effectively a letter from the Home Office that informs her that she’s liable to be removed to Rwanda.”
She says the charity knows of eight women who have received a notice of intent.
“The plan has really caused enormous distress and fear amongst the refugee and asylum-seeking women that we support. One woman who reached out to us, is really terrified that the Home Office is going to come to her asylum accommodation to detain her. So she started sleeping rough. She’s spending her days outside of her accommodation. She’s sleeping the park at at night, so just imagine how terrified she must be of being sent to Rwanda that she felt she had to choose homelessness and all the risk that that carries for a young woman.”
In November 2023, the UK’s Supreme Court found Rwanda was not a safe third country to send asylum seekers because there was a risk of them being returned to their home country and facing ill-treatment.
“So they found that there were substantial grounds for believing that asylum seekers sent to Rwanda would face a real risk of ill treatment as a result of refoulement which is being returned to their country of origin, and for many of the women that we support, who escaped war and persecution being sent back to their countries of origin, would effectively be a death sentence.”
In its own human rights assessments the Home Office has acknowledged there could be specific risks of detaining and deporting women to Rwanda – like the risk of sexual violence in refugee camps.
But, in April 2024, Rishi Sunak passed the Safety of Rwanda Act which got around the ruling and declared that Rwanda is safe – for everybody.
But Fatima and her peers are still hoping to fight the removal.
Andrea Vukovic from Women for Refugee Women says the detained women could make the case that Rwanda would be unsafe for them. That will come down to their individual circumstances.
“So for many of the women we support, they’re going to have to collate the evidence to challenge their notices of intent for many of them that will require revealing past traumatic experiences and providing evidence for these which can be really difficult.”
Tortoise also spoke to lawyers who are working with some of those affected by possible removal.
They said their clients can no longer be lawfully detained in the run-up to the election given the fact no removal decision has been made and that there is no real likelihood they will be on a flight to Rwanda in July anyway.
They also said Rishi Sunak’s election announcement has actually strengthened their clients’ case for bail. Particularly as the Labour Party, who appear likely to win the election, have said they would scrap the policy.
Campaigners say that hundreds more could be eligible for removal to Rwanda under the current law. The Home Office said it wouldn’t be providing ongoing commentary on detentions or its operational activity.
For now, many of the women facing possible removal will remain in detention, an experience which Andrea Vukvoic says can be re-traumatising.
“The really important thing to point out is that there’s no time limit on immigration detention. So women can be locked up for days, weeks, and even months, without any idea of when they’ll be released. One woman that we spoke to put it really powerfully, she said. In prison you can count down the days until you’re released in detention. You count the days you’re there with no clear end in sight.”
This episode was written by Phoebe Davis and mixed by Casey Magloire.
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