A British judge has rejected a bid to ground a flight due to take more than 30 asylum-seekers on a one-way flight to Rwanda next week.
Judge Jonathan Swift refused a request from a group of the asylum-seekers for an injunction grounding the flight planned for Tuesday.
Despite the ruling, further legal challenges to Britain's new Rwanda immigration policy are due in the coming days.
The flight is the first due to leave under a controversial deal between the United Kingdom and the East African country. Britain plans to send migrants who arrive in the U.K. as stowaways or in small boats to Rwanda, where their asylum claims will be processed. If successful, they will stay in the African country.
A group of asylum-seekers asked a U.K. court on Friday to stop the British government from sending them on a one-way flight to Rwanda, arguing that the controversial plan is not safe.
The four claimants, backed by refugee groups and a U.K. border staff trade union are among an unspecified number of migrants who have been told by the British government that they will be deported to Rwanda. Refugee groups say the wider group includes people fleeing Syria and Afghanistan who arrived in Britain across the English Channel on small boats.
U.N. officials say such a move by the UK government violates the international Refugee Convention. Human rights groups call the deal – for which the U.K. has paid Rwanda 120 million pounds ($158 million) upfront – unworkable, inhumane and a waste of British taxpayers’ money.
The claimants' lawyer Raza Husain said “the system is not safe.”
Laura Dubinsky, a lawyer representing the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said refugees sent to Rwanda under the program were at risk of “serious, irreparable harm.” She said the agency had “serious concerns about Rwandan capacity” to handle the arrivals.
James Wilson of Detention Action, one of the groups involved in the case, said the government was “turning a blind eye to the many clear dangers and human rights violations that (the policy) would inflict on people seeking asylum.”
The British government argues the policy is in the public interest. It is seeking to distinguish between refugees who arrive by authorized routes, such as programs to help people fleeing Afghanistan or Ukraine, and those it says arrive by illegal means, including dangerous Channel crossings run by smugglers.
The government says it welcomes refugees who come to Britain by approved routes but wants to put criminal smuggling gangs out of business.
More than 28,000 migrants entered the U.K. across the Channel last year, up from 8,500 in 2020. Dozens have died, including 27 people in November when a single boat capsized.
