A Home Office decision to deport a 92-year-old widow who wanted to spend the “end of her days” with her only child in Britain could kill the pensioner, her daughter has said.

Myrtle Cothill, who was born under the British flag in 1924, and whose father fought for Britain in the first world war, has been ordered by the Home Office to turn up at Heathrow on Tuesday for a flight to South Africa.



Mary Wills, her daughter, told the Guardian that officials said she should go back to South Africa where she has no family and seek help from the Red Cross, and offered her £1,000 to help send her on her way.

The pensioner has fought a campaign since last year to stay with 66-year-old Wills in Poole, arguing she has no support in South Africa and is financially independent from the state with her own £300 a month pension.

“We didn’t really get a chance to talk at the last meeting, they [Home Office officials] just went on and on. When we said where would my mother go when she got to Johannesburg, they said she could go to the Red Cross and get help,” she said.

“My mother is in a terrible state. She is just shaking and shaking,” said Wills, herself close to tears. “It is so cruel. We don’t know what to do.” She added that officials said the government would pay for her flight to South Africa and give her “£1,000 to tide her over”.

“The thing is my mother gets a private pension from my late father so she wouldn’t qualify for assistance from Red Cross. But really that is beside the point. She should be with her family. The heartbreak of leaving us at her age could finish her off and finish me off too,” said Wills.

“If she doesn’t go to the airport on Tuesday, they will probably come here and remove her and take her to detention centre. That will be signing her death certificate,” she warned.

The demand Cothill be removed was sent on Tuesday. An accompanying letter from a Home Office immigration enforcement officer told the 92-year-old that she was booked on a Virgin Atlantic flight VS601 to South Africa at 21.10 that evening.

In an interview with the Guardian in December, Cothill said: “I don’t want to go. I’ve got nobody there and I am not well enough to travel. I’m very upset. I’m very old. I’m 92. I want to live with my daughter for the end of my days.”

Cothill, whose husband died more than 40 years ago, survived on her own in South Africa with the support of her friends and her local church. But as she got older and her community thinned, it became apparent to her that she needed to be cared for by her daughter in the UK.

She has an enlarged heart, suffers poor hearing and has lost the sight in one eye because of macular degeneration, but neither her condition nor her advanced age is enough to secure her the comfort of life with her daughter.

The Home Office said in December that Cothill’s application was rejected as her “condition was not deemed to be life-threatening” and that “suitable medical treatment” was available in her country of origin.

She has been in Dorset since February 2014 and made an application to the Home Office for leave to remain the country as an adult dependent on human rights grounds.

Cothill’s application to remain with her family was rejected by the first tier tribunal. An application for leave to the court of appeal was rejected by the upper tribunal in October 2015. In its reasons for the decision, it said that Cothill had “obtained entry to the United Kingdom by deception, and that she and her daughter arranged their affairs with the deliberate intention of making her removal difficult.”

The tribunal vice-president CMG Ockelton said: “Evidently neither of them is a person of credit and there is no reason why they should be believed … about the appellant’s circumstances.”

Her barrister Jan Doerfel said: “I do not think the decision is fair. Myrtle is clearly physically and emotionally dependent on her family, and Mary and her husband cannot leave and go to South Africa to fulfil Myrtle’s needs, which were the basic needs of wanting to care for someone and wanting to be cared for by a close relative.”

James Davies, Cothill’s immigration adviser at International Care Network, added: “Myrtle does not have close family members in [South Africa] willing and/or able to look after her, and is dependent on both the emotional and physical care of her daughter in the UK. To take a decision to remove her is contrary to every human instinct or duty to care for our elders.”