UK: High Court Rules Finds Border Officials Violated Asylum Seekers’ Human Rights

GHRTV

Apr 6, 2022 - 17:08

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UK: High Court Rules Finds Border Officials Violated Asylum Seekers’ Human Rights

Source: Sky News

03-04-2022

Alketa Hotaj

Europe and Human Rights Researcher,

Global Human Rights Defence.

On 25 March 2022, the Home Office was found to have unlawfully confiscated hundreds of mobile phones belonging to asylum seekers who arrived in the United Kingdom, according to a decision by the High Court. The High Court decision was reached as the result of a case brought by three asylum seekers against the Home Secretary over an unpublished policy and practice that permitted police to search anyone coming on small boats to claim refugee status for their mobile phones between April 2020 and November 2020.

During this time period, around 2,000 phones were taken, and it was only after the threat of legal action that the Home Office agreed to return the devices months later. As a result, it was impossible for vulnerable asylum seekers to contact family and friends to inform them of their safe arrival or to write down any important contact numbers that they had saved on their mobile phones.

Along with taking their mobile phones, the authorities falsely required that the asylum seekers reveal the PIN numbers for those phones, claiming that failure to do so would constitute an "offence" ([2022] EWHC 695 (Admin) [15]). Additionally, the officers transferred all of the data stored on those phones onto Home Office systems. Clare Jennings, who represented one of the claimants, argued that the “systematic extraction of personal data from vulnerable asylum seekers, who were not suspects in any crime, was an astonishing and unparalleled assault on fundamental privacy rights” (Gold Jennings Solicitors, 2022).

The Home Office argued in their defence that section 48 of the Immigration Act (2016) enabled them to search asylum seekers, confiscate and hold their phones, and extract data from them. However, it was found by the High Court that personal searches are not permissible under the statute and that the confiscation of phones constituted a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights' Article 8 which assures everyone the right to liberty.

The High Court will hold another hearing to assess how much compensation should be granted to the three claimants and what repercussions the department will face for failing to be honest and transparent in responding to the allegations.

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