Disbelief again at yet another, in my opinion as a lawyer, insane ruling by the Immigration Tribunal.
An Albanian criminal drug-dealer who had been expelled from the UK three times and who sneaked back in each time has been allowed to remain in Britain after the Government tried to deport him for a fourth time. Albanian Mr Erind Koka, 33, won his right to stay despite being jailed for helping to cultivate cannabis, after an immigration judge ruled he should not be deported, saying that cultivate cannabis was not such a serious offence as to merit deportation. The decision was upheld despite an appeal by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper
In what is, in my opinion, an utterly unjustifiable decision, the woke cypriot activist judge, lower-tier immigration tribunal judge Kyriacoulla Degirmenci, someone who at 9KBW operated as an immigration barrister ruled that Koka’s offending “fell significantly short of… serious harm”….really? Someone who was running a cannabis farm, not serious harm? Really?
Koka first attempted to enter the UK using false documents on a passenger plane but was refused entry and deported to Finland. He was refused entry and deported to Finland. Just seven months later, he was found hiding in a trailer in Dunkirk. In September 2018, he was detected hiding in a camper-van in Coquelles and removed by the French authorities.
He eventually managed to get into the UK illegally, hidden in a lorry on Oct 3 2019.
The judge noted that Koka had pleaded guilty to the cannabis charge. His involvement was deemed minimal, consisting only of watering plants on a single occasion. …Really?
This finding meant Koka did not legally fall within the definition of “foreign criminal” for deportation purposes.He claimed sending him home would breach his rights to a family life, under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, because had a daughter and partner in the UK.
Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman believed Koka’s offending had caused serious harm and decided to deport him because his presence in the UK was “not conducive” to the public good, hardly surprising as he was operating a cannabis farm. Foreign national offenders are only typically eligible for deportation if they are sentenced to more than 12 months behind bars, and in reality, operating a cannabis farm should have carried a sentence easily more than 12 months, but in this woke world, it is likely that the sentence was reduced because he was a foreign national, a categopry that can increasingly operate illegally without consequence.
Koka responded to the deportation order by initially seeking refugee status, but withdrew that attempt and instead claimed the right to stay on the basis that deportation would breach his rights to a family life under article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights. As such this is a clear manipulation of the system.
He had a daughter and partner in the UK, the court was told and of course, in line with the current activist nature of immigration tribunal judges it was decided that this illegal migrant’s offending “fell significantly short of… serious harm” because the Albanian had pleaded guilty!
Laughingly the Court accepted that his involvement in producing cannabis was said to be watering plants on one occasion.
On appeal, upper tribunal immigration judges Lesley Smith and David Zucker ruled there had been no error in law, but the error of law grounds are a pure technicality. If the Judge has made a ludicrous decision, but no error of law arose, then the appeal fails. The upper tribunal immigration judges said: “No other matters of significance were put in issue. Had the judge gone on to consider matters not put in issue by the Secretary of State, criticism of the judge [might] well have been justified”.
In other words, this means that the case set out by the Secretary of State was poorly prepared and considered and had matters of significance been challenged and proper evidence provided then the criticism of the judge [might] well have been justified.
In my opinion, this sort of ludicrous decision arises as a result of the never-ending cost cutting in the legal service, where key facts are dropped in order to meet the encouragement of the parties to narrow the issues as best they can… all because there isn’t enough money available in the Court system after decades of cuts. This not only results in the need for shorter decisions by judges, but shorter cases where cases are poorly prepared by the State because of budget cuts, claiming wrongly that efficiency is in the interests of justice.
What is desperately needed is an abolition of the ECHR and for immigration cases, there should be “an overriding interest of the British People, the British economy and British public safety”.
Quite rightly, Home Office officials are examining how judges are applying the rights to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and there needs to be a Government Policy which provides a guide for how to interpret the Human Rights, to stop the judges looking for loopholes and to identify how some human rights lawyers and migrants abuse the law to avoid deportation.
Labour ministers have been warned “too many foreign criminals have been allowed to stay for reasons which defy common sense”.
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice said: “This is yet another bonkers example of where the ECHR has stifled the UK’s ability to protect its own people” when referring to the case of ZA.
The man, known only as ZA, applied for settled status on the basis he had a partner here but did not tell the authorities of his previous convictions, in particular the fact that he arrived in Britain in December 2018 after serving almost seven years in jail in Romania for rape, when found without documentation hidden in a trailer by Border Agency staff at Dunkirk when he had again been attempting to illegally enter the UK. Hardly surprising that he destroyed documents given his background. Fury erupted when he used human rights laws to avoid being deported claiming he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that it would breach his Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (a right to home and family life) to send him back to Romania.
Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice said: “Reform has been clear that we will deport all foreign criminals. We must leave the ECHR and take control of our borders once and for all.”
This will mean that all cases of foreign criminals and illegal migrants that occurred after 2025 will be re-examined and in most cases, the people will be deported under the Reporm policy of Detect, Detain, Deport for anyone entering the country illegally or without papers.
Former Immigration Minister Kevin Foster said “Another day, another dangerous criminal citing human rights to avoid being deported, with the courts more concerned about protecting him than potential victims and the general British public.“
!