When Chevon Brown was 21 he was convicted of dangerous driving and spent seven months in prison. He admits he was speeding at over 100 miles an hour in an uninsured car and acknowledges he behaved irresponsibly, but feels the consequences have been wholly disproportionate.

As a result of that conviction he was deported to Jamaica a year ago, a country he left as a teenager and where he has no close relatives. He has been separated from his father and three younger brothers in Oxford, and is struggling to readjust to life without his family.

His mother moved to the US when he was very young and his father emigrated to the UK when he was four, leaving him to be brought up by a grandfather in Jamaica, until his father was settled enough to pay for Brown to join him in Oxford.

When the grandfather died, Brown’s father arranged for him to move to the UK, aged 14, where he went to Theresa May’s old school Wheatley Park in Holton, Oxfordshire, to do his GCSEs. Later he attended an IT academy and qualified as a technical engineer.

Deportation flights for 37 people cost Home Office £443,000 Read more

The driving conviction in 2016 was a one-off offence, but three years later he was arrested by immigration enforcement officials, taken to a detention centre and deported last February aged 23.

“I admit what I did was wrong. I know I am guilty of dangerous driving but it wasn’t a stolen car; nobody was hurt, I didn’t crash into anything, there was no damage,” he said. “I feel I was treated unfairly. I know a lot of English people who commit driving offences and don’t get classed as serious criminals.”

His lawyer in London said his case raised important questions about the ethics of deporting people who have spent their formative years in the UK. A leaked extract from the Home Office’s internal review into the causes of the Windrush scandal, when some long-term residents were wrongly deported to countries they had left as children, recommended the government should consider ending the deportation of foreign-born offenders who came to the UK as children. The restarting of deportation flights before the publication of this review has caused controversy.

Brown is struggling to cope, particularly because widespread media coverage in Jamaica of the deportation flights has made employers there wary of hiring people with English accents. The UK government justified the deportation flight last year in the same way that ministers have defended this year’s, stressing that those on board were serious, violent and persistent offenders, including murderers and rapists and people convicted of firearms offences.

“I have been labelled as a murderer and a drug trafficker and a rapist,” Brown said. “I sound English; when I give people my CV they ask why I’m not going back to England and if I’ve been deported. You can see that they don’t want you. There is a strong level of stigma.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Vance Brown, Chevon’s father, says his son has been treated badly. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

He was told by the Home Office he was a danger to the public and that he had not built up sufficiently strong ties to the UK to prevent deportation. The experience of being put on the flight last February was terrifying. “They chained me like I was a wild animal,” he said, describing the wrist and foot restraints he had to wear.

“What has happened has caused me grave pain and depression; I feel like I have been ripped apart from my family,” he said. Home Office staff told him he would be able to stay in touch with relatives by Skype. “That’s not the case, it’s not the same as seeing someone every day,” he said. He has very little money and is staying with a friend of his father.

Jacqueline McKenzie, a London-based lawyer who is representing Brown pro bono, is gathering evidence to make an application to revoke the deportation. His situation was worsened by the fact that the local authority, who looked after Brown for a period after his GCSEs, knew he needed to naturalise but did not help him to do so, she said.

“The Home Office have labelled him as someone who has committed serious and heinous crimes, putting him at risk in Jamaica. We’re in the process of making representations on Chevon’s behalf but we hope that when the Home Office receives these that they’ll deal with this application expeditiously and allow him to return to his loved ones and life in the UK,” she said.

His father, Vance Brown, who owns a barber’s shop in north Oxford, said he was not opposed to the principle of deportation, but felt his son had been treated badly, particularly because he had already served his time in prison. “It is so unfair. He broke the law, of course, but it was not a serious crime, it was a driving offence. Murderers and rapists, that’s a different kettle of fish, but in terms of small offences, I think they should give people another chance.”

The Home Office said it did not routinely comment on individual cases. A spokesperson said: “Our priority will always be to keep the British public safe. That is why foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.”