Dexter Bristol died following a 10-month battle to prove he was not an illegal immigrant

The mother of Dexter Bristol, a member of the Windrush generation who died this year, has urged a coroner to consider what role the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policies played in his death.

At a pre-inquest review at Poplar coroner’s court in east London, Sentina D’Artanyan Bristol asked assistant coroner Dr William Dolman to extend the scope of the inquest to examine what role the policy played in her 57-year-old son’s death. A postmortem revealed that the cause of Bristol’s death was acute heart failure.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dexter Bristol’s passport. He moved from Grenada, where he was a British subject, to the UK in 1968. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian

He collapsed outside his home and died suddenly on 31 March after fighting a 10-month battle with the Home Office to prove he was not an illegal immigrant. His mother believes that the stress this caused contributed to his death.



D’Artanyan-Bristol’s barrister Una Morris revealed that Bristol had felt unwell in the year before he died but believed he could not access NHS care because of his immigration status. He had not seen a doctor since 25 August 2016.

Bristol moved from Grenada, where he was a British subject, to the UK in 1968, aged eight, to join his mother who was working as an NHS nurse. He spent the rest of his life in the UK.

He was sacked from his cleaning job in May last year because he had no passport, was denied benefits and became depressed. Bristol died while still trying to prove he was in the country legally.

The last year of his life was spent trying to get the Home Office to acknowledge that he was not an illegal immigrant. Until he was sacked, Bristol had no idea there was any problem with his immigration status.

Bristol’s immigration solicitor, Jacqueline McKenzie, said Home Office delays in processing his requests for his records had contributed to his spiralling depression.

“We saw him get more and more depressed and anxious. He died being denied an immigration status which was rightfully his.”

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Bristol had his benefits terminated at the end of 2016 because he could not prove that he had the right to be in the UK. He managed to find a cleaning job in early 2017, but was sacked when his employers realised he had no passport. He tried to get another job but without a passport was unable to do so. Employers are fined £20,000 if they are found to have hired someone without papers.

Originally the full inquest was due to have been held on Friday but D’Artanyan-Bristol’s legal team persuaded Dolman to instead hold a pre-inquest review to consider submissions about widening the scope of his inquiry to include the issue that Bristol was caught by a hostile environment created by the Home Office and the Immigration Act 2014.

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Dolman said he would reserve judgment on the scope of the inquest and on whether or not to make the Home Office an interested party. He said the inquest would be “a full and fearless inquiry”.

Speaking after the hearing D’Artanyan-Bristol said: “As Dexter’s mum I expect that the assistant coroner’s reference to a ‘full and fearless inquiry’ will include looking at the Home Office policies affecting Windrush migrants.”