Summons to spare Joseph Nembhard, 37, who came to UK from Caribbean as teenager

A man who came to the UK from the Caribbean as a teenager is set to be granted an 11th-hour reprieve from being placed on a deportation flight to Jamaica.

About 50 people are thought to have been booked on to Wednesday’s secretive charter flight, the first to Jamaica since the Home Office suspended the flights last April after the Windrush scandal.

After the scandal broke, Sajid Javid eventually said at least 63 people had been wrongly deported to Jamaica.

Joseph Nembhard, 37, who moved to the UK from Jamaica at the age of 18 in 1999 and whose grandmother and several aunts were part of the Windrush generation, has been held at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre and had been told he would be put on Wednesday’s flight after being convicted of a violent offence against his former wife.

He was preparing an appeal against his conviction.

Nembhard is a key witness in the inquest into the death of another Jamaican detainee, Carlington Spencer, one of four people who died at Morton Hall immigration removal centre in Lincoln in 2017. A second man, Christopher Richards, also facing removal on Wednesday’s flight, is also a witness.

The senior coroner for Lincolnshire, Timothy Brennand has issued a summons for Nembhard and Richards to attend a pre-inquest review on 11 March so the Home Office will not be able to deport him on Wednesday. Had the coroner not issued the summons on Monday, Nembhard would be unlikely to be present in the UK for the hearing. Both men hope the legally binding summons will prevent their deportation on Wednesday’s flight.

Nembhard said he was relieved but devastated that while he was in detention he was separated from his partner who is 24 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child and from their four-year-old daughter.

“A lot of the guys in here who are due to be put on that flight are worried that they will get ill-treated. Many of them are very depressed,” he told the Guardian.

The organisation Movement for Justice said it had spoken to many of those due to fly on Wednesday. Of them, 13 came to the UK as children, 12 have been in the UK for more than 19 years and 18 have Windrush-generation connections. Thirty-six British children will lose their fathers if all the deportations go ahead and two of the men, including Nembhard,a have babies on the way.

Movement for Justice staged a protest outside the Jamaican high commission on Monday.

Campaigners against the secretive charter flight called on Jamaica’s high commission to stop helping the deportation of people by issuing emergency travel documents to the Home Office.

End Deportations wants people to contact their MPs asking them to request that the Home Office stop the deportation orders for their constituents due to fly on Wednesday.

The Home Office cannot deport people who do not have passports for their country without emergency travel documents issued by the deportees’ embassies.

According to an FoI response obtained by the Guardian, the Home Office spent more than £80,000 in 2017-18 on payments to 33 embassies for travel documents. The majority of embassies do not charge for issuing these emergency travel documents but some do. Jamaica and Nigeria are understood to be two countries where many people are deported to who do charge.

The Home Office declined to list the embassies that do charge for issuing emergency travel documents and said the maximum it pays for a single travel document is £87.82.

Twane Morgan, an Afghanistan veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, was due to be on Wednesday’s flight. He was detained last month and is being held in Colnbrook detention centre. More than 85,000 people have signed a change.org petition protesting against his deportation.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The UK, like many other countries, uses charter flights to return people to their country of origin where they no longer have a right to remain. The majority of those being returned are returned on scheduled, commercial flights but this isn’t always an option, especially where the individual may be a foreign national offender.”

“It is only right that we seek to deport foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK. This ensures we keep the public safe. All individuals on this charter flight are serous criminals.”

Satbir Singh, the chief executive of Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said: “It’s inappropriate for the government to resume mass deportations, particularly to the Caribbean, before the Windrush Lessons Learned review has even concluded. If you’ve lived here your whole life, this is your home. And if you commit a crime, you should serve your sentence and then be released. That’s how a justice system works in a civilised country.”

The Jamaican high commission has been approached for comment.





