Activists are stepping up their campaign to encourage airline passengers to halt the deportation of immigrants – even those being booted out of Britain as criminals.

Members of a group called Lesbians And Gays Support The Migrants last week handed out hundreds of flyers and replaced adverts on the London Underground with posters providing a step-by-step guide on how to hinder removals.

The protesters also accosted passengers at Heathrow airport before posing for a photograph outside the British Airways lounge.

Members of the group called Lesbians And Gays Support The Migrants (pictured outside Heathrow) are stepping up their campaign to encourage airline passengers to halt the deportation of immigrants

The activists include Darragh Martin, a 40-year-old Irish playwright and children’s author who was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 2006 to develop his writing in New York.

Others are Chris Hicks, 26, a graduate in English from University College London and Morten Thayson, a Greenpeace activist.

The new campaign follows an incident earlier this year – revealed by The Mail on Sunday – in which the removal from Britain of a Somalian man involved in the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl was halted after airline passengers staged a mutiny demanding his release.

The posters on the Tube encourage passengers to ‘See it. Say it. Stop it’ – a spoof on the British Transport Police’s ‘See It. Say It. Sorted’ anti-terror campaign.

They feature three cartoon images. In the first, two Home Office officials are shown manhandling a deportee whose face is etched with pain.

Passengers are urged to ‘ask at check-in and look out for a person at the back of the plane with two guards’.

The next depicts an impassioned passenger confronting a stony-faced flight attendant and suggests passengers ‘talk to the person being deported [and] demand to talk to the pilot’.

The last shows a defiant passenger refusing to sit down despite the demands of a Home Office guard. An instruction beside it reads: ‘Stand up and refuse to sit down.’

A flyer handed out on the Tube provides a step-by-step guide on how to hinder removals

Last night, Harry Fletcher, of the Victims’ Rights Campaign, said: ‘In virtually every case, the deportation will be justified because the individual is a foreign national and has committed a very serious crime which left victims traumatised.

‘The process is legitimate and I would encourage these protesters to examine the material facts of the case rather than assume that all cases are unjustified and even illegal – because they’re not.’

A British Airways spokesperson said it was a ‘legal requirement’ for airlines to deport people, adding: ‘Not fulfilling this obligation amounts to breaking the law.’

However, Virgin Airlines bowed to pressure from activists and has stopped helping with deportations following a string of staged interventions by passengers.

In July, a Swedish student filmed herself halting the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker on a Turkish Airlines flight from Gothenburg to Istanbul.

A month later, a Turkish Airlines pilot refused to take off from Heathrow after campaigners convinced him that an asylum seeker on his plane would be beheaded by the Taliban if he was returned to Afghanistan.

A spokesman for Lesbians And Gays Support The Migrants last night said: ‘LGSMigrants is committed to ending deportations. Many people are being deported to places where they may well suffer persecution and severe harm.’

Neither Mr Martin, Mr Hicks nor Mr Thayson responded to a request for comment.