Two people have escaped immediate deportation to Jamaica after 11th-hour interventions by their lawyers as the Home Office was accused of trying to remove people while their applications to remain in the UK under the Windrush scheme were still being considered.

Lascelles White, 61, moved to the UK from the Caribbean in 1973 when he was five years old. He has applied to regularise his status under the Windrush scheme but has not received a response. Instead he was detained and was facing deportation on a charter flight to Jamaica thought to be taking off as early as Wednesday.

White’s solicitor, Connie Sozi from Deighton Pierce Glynn, made an urgent out-of-hours application to the high court to try to prevent his deportation and on Tuesday night, as the judge was considering the application, the Home Office informed Sozi that White would no longer be put on the flight.

“I submitted a letter before claim stating that Lascelles should not be removed before his application to remain in the UK under the Windrush scheme has been considered,” said Sozi.

“This issue does not just affect my client, but potentially others on the charter flight. If people have a legal right to be in the UK then they have that right, irrespective of whether they have criminal convictions. The home secretary is potentially removing Windrush people … who have a legal right to be here. There appears to be a systemic failure on the part of the Home Office to consider Windrush applications before trying to remove people.”

Christopher Richards, who is a witness in the inquest of Carlington Spencer, an immigration detainee who died in 2017, also learned on Tuesday that his deportation has been deferred by the Home Office following last-minute legal representations by his solicitor Imogen Townley at Wilsons solicitors.

Home secretary Sajid Javid told parliament on Tuesday: “None of those being deported are British citizens or members of the Windrush generation.”

Earlier on Tuesday Labour MP David Lammy criticised the decision to restart mass deportation flights back to the Caribbean before the publication of an independent investigation into what had caused the Windrush scandal. “How can you be confident that you are not making the same mistakes?” he asked.

Lammy accused the government of “pandering to far-right racism” and lashed out at the Home Office in the House of Commons, saying that incompetence had “killed” at least 11 people who had been wrongly deported back to the Caribbean.

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The deaths were a “shocking indictment of your government’s pandering to a far-right racism, sham immigration targets and a dog-whistle to the right-wing press,” he said.

He told Javid that the decision to send around 50 people back to Jamaica in the next few days – possibly as soon as Wednesday – was an indication that “in this country black lives matter less”.

Outlining details of those people expected to be on the deportation flight, Lammy said that 13 came to the UK as children, nine arrived under the age of 10, 11 had indefinite leave to remain and one has a British passport.

“Thirty-six British children will have their parents taken away by this charter flight. Once enslaved, then colonised, and now repatriated. Why do you say that these children should live without their parents?”

Javid said it was wrong to “suggest that there is even an ounce of racism in this house”. He added that some of the previous mistaken deportations had happened under Labour administrations before 2010. He said that everyone set to be deported on the charter flight had been convicted of a “serious crime”, and that the deportations were in the interests of public safety.

Javid added that among the individuals set to be deported were people who had committed rape and murder: “We are required under the law, quite correctly, to deport anyone that has such a serious conviction … Most liberal democracies have very similar laws.”

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However, campaigners state that many of those being removed have less serious convictions. Chevon Brown, 23, who has lived in Oxford since arriving in the UK as a 14-year-old, is scheduled for deportation after pleading guilty to a dangerous driving offence and serving eight months in prison. “I’ve got nowhere to go in Jamaica. All my family is here,” Brown said. He objected to being labelled as a serious criminal: “I feel like I’m being withdrawn from my family because of a driving conviction.”

Another of those scheduled for deportation is Owen Haisley, a Manchester-based youth worker and DJ who has lived in the UK for 41 years, since the age of four. Speaking from a cell in Harmondsworth immigration removal centre, he said he felt terrified at the prospect of being removed to a country he left as an infant and where he has no family.

“I have no memories of Jamaica; all I know is England,” Haisley said. “It feels very wrong to be ripped apart from your life and to be taken away from your children.” Haisley, who has three children aged nine, seven and five, spent just over a year in prison after a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm, which triggered a deportation order. Lawyers lodged an emergency judicial review on Tuesday in an attempt to prevent his removal.

Haisley had been unaware that his immigration status was unclear. “I was given indefinite leave to remain. I was in infants, primary, secondary school and college here. I’ve never had any restriction on working here or living here. It never occurred to me that I could be removed.”

He said he regretted his crime. “I’m very ashamed and remorseful but I’ve done the time for the crime I committed. Why can’t I be released? I didn’t come here illegally,” he said.

He said another 10 people were also being held at Harmondsworth, waiting to be told when the deportation flight was scheduled to depart. Jamaican media has reported that the flight is expected as early as Wednesday, but the Home Office will not reveal its departure date. Haisley said he had nowhere to go in Jamaica and had been given no information about where he would be taken. He has only the clothes he was wearing and the £12.90 he had in his pocket when he was arrested in late January.

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Among other people who have been told that they face imminent deportation is a former British soldier who served in Afghanistan and is suffering from PTSD as a result of his time in the army; a man who is registered blind; and Dalton Bacchas, who has been in the UK since 2001, and who has spent some time in prison on drugs charges. Charmaine Bacchas, his wife and the mother of his four daughters, was also trying to lodge a last-minute appeal against his removal. “We’ve been told that the children can continue to have a relationship with their father by social media,” she said.

Lammy told the government: “Your department’s treatment of the Windrush generation has been nothing less than a national scandal. We are now 10 months on from when this scandal broke. Not a penny has been paid out to any Windrush victim in a compensation scheme. The independent Windrush review has not yet reported. Before the report is complete, why are you deporting people?”

Javid said that righting the wrongs suffered by the Windrush generation was a priority for him. “Let there be no doubt my commitment to this remains resolute.” At least 3,400 people affected by the Windrush scandal have been granted citizenship in the past 10 months, Javid said.