The Lawyer Who Takes The Cases No One Wants by Aida Edemaria - The Guardian PDF

4/17/2016
The lawyer who takes the cases no one wants | Aida Edemariam | News | The Guardian
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The lawyer who takes the cases no one

wants
It has never been easy to win as an immigration lawyer but now the government is trying to make
it impossible
by
Thursday 14 April 2016 06.00BST
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http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/14/the-lawyer-who-takes-the-cases-no-one-wants
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wo or three times a month, Tom Giles says goodbye to his wife and three
children at their home in Abingdon, and drives north, through Oxfordshire,
to Campseld House immigration detention centre. This is Tory heartland
rich elds, manicured villages, 4x4s. Campseld sits at the end of a long
country lane, opposite Oxford airports private jets and training planes. On
the constituency map it is perched at the end of a Tory promontory: David
Camerons Witney constituency ows down one side, Boris Johnsons former efdom of
Henley down the other.
It is nearly 9am by the time Giles, a slight man with a gap between his teeth and a brighteyed, youthful energy, presents himself at security. He places everything but a notebook
and a pen in a locker, then is led through a series of locked doors to a small highwindowed room along a corridor lined with similarly small high-windowed rooms. He
sits down at a desk, checks the handsets in front of him, nds a blank page in his
notebook, and waits for his rst client.
Over the next ve hours, Giles sees a series of detainees for up to 30 minutes each. The
men often wear standard-issue blue tracksuits and ip-ops because they were
apprehended in the street and served with deportation orders, or taken from their homes
at dawn and not allowed to pack their clothes, or arrived at a port with nothing. Some of
them came to the UK to study and overstayed, others have lived and worked here for
years. Others, exhausted after arduous journeys from Syria, Eritrea, Somalia,
Afghanistan, Libya or Iraq, have been here for a few days.
Giless job, as a legal aid immigration solicitor, is to work out if a person has a legal right
to stay in the UK, and if so, to try his hardest to make that possible in a legal
environment that is becoming more hostile by the day. As each prisoner explains his
circumstances, Giles listens, asks questions. Often he has to pick up one of the handsets,
gesturing to the man before him to do the same, and they speak through an interpreter.
Giles says he will do what he can, he will do his best. Increasingly, he has to say that he is
sorry, there is nothing he can do.
Its just sad, Giles said after one of these sessions. Very sad. On a human,
compassionate level we can all see why he should be allowed to stay. But theres also
whats legally possible, and the two are not the same.
Spending time with Giles makes it clear that the space for what is legally possible has
been aggressively and deliberately narrowed through a series of decisions all but
invisible to most British citizens.
When MPs voted, last October, to give the immigration bill 2015-16, currently going
through parliament, a second reading, Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat
spokesman, protested that there had already been seven immigration bills in the last
eight years and 45,000 changes to the immigration rules since Theresa May became
home secretary in 2010. Specialist lawyers such as Giles, who argue that even they can
barely keep up, also point to the fact that in 2013, the coalition government cut the legal
aid budget by hundreds of millions of pounds. At the same time it limited availability of
nancial help for immigration cases to judicial reviews, persons seeking asylum, victims
of domestic violence or tracking, and those in immigration detention centres seeking
bail. This means that anyone applying to remain in this country, on any basis apart from
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asylum or domestic violence be it length of residency, a job oer, investment, marriage

or family must be able to aord a lawyer (and the rapidly increasing visa application
fees) or navigate a near-impenetrable system unaided.
Since the Immigration Act 1971 came into force, any migrant caught without the correct
papers has been subject to removal from the UK. However, to those for whom it is
politically expedient to be seen to be tough on foreigners, this is apparently not enough.
The 2015-16 bill, the rst since the Tories achieved their majority, received its third
reading in the House of Lords on 12 April. The bill is striking for the range and ingenuity
of its criminalisation of those who fall foul of the ever-shifting rules: working illegally or
hiring illegal workers; renting accommodation while illegal or renting accommodation to
someone who might be illegal; driving or having a bank account while illegal all would
carry the possibility of substantial nes or even prison sentences. The government
would be given the power to seize the earnings of illegal workers under the Proceeds of
Crime Act 2002. The bill would allow immigration ocers to search homes and people
and to seize payslips, timesheets and nationality documents. It would also allow police
ocers who stop vehicles to check immigration status, and proposes that employers
who want to hire non-European migrants would have to pay an immigration skills
charge to do so. More than one observer Doreen Lawrence among them has pointed
out that some of the powers in the immigration bill, specically right-to-rent and the
right to ask motorists for immigration papers, are eectively permission to discriminate
on the basis of colour.
In this already dicult arena, Giles specialises in defending some of the most dicult
and unpopular cases of all: those subject to deportation, and foreign nationals
imprisoned in British jails. And he is very good at it. Partly because he will take up cases
others will not, and keeps ghting them even when repeatedly knocked back, a
signicant number of Giless cases have gone up to the highest courts in the country and
entered the law books as having proved important points of principle, about rights of
appeal, for instance, or who should, under the new dispensation, be allowed legal aid.
In a few months time Giles will go to the supreme court with a case that tests one of the
most sweeping measures in the new bill: deport rst, appeal later, which allows the
government to deport people even if they are in the middle of a legal appeal. It is
currently applied only to prisoners in the criminal justice system who also happen to be
foreign (they may well be legally here), and since July 2014, have automatically been
deported at the end of their sentences. The new bill reiterates a Tory manifesto pledge,
that deport rst, appeal later should extend much further and apply to all migrants,
except for refugees.
Because this proposal was in the Tory manifesto it is not subject to amendment in the
Commons or the Lords. The only way to ght it is in the courts, which means that if
Giless supreme court challenge is successful, the consequences would reach throughout
the immigration system.
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iles is a partner at Turpin Miller, a legal aid rm in east Oxford. When we

met at his oce last summer, there was a heatwave and on the top oor it
was hot overwhelmingly, enervatingly hot. Open windows and fans made
little dierence. Already scrappy pot plants struggled not to collapse
altogether. Giles sat among les les on the oor, les in cardboard boxes,
les in cabinets lining the walls. Its a ght with paper! he said. I
actually did tidy up in your honour.
Most of the les were opened after he met detainees at Campseld, or after calls directly
to the oce, or, quite often, after meeting prisoners at HMP Huntercombe, a prison that
houses only foreign oenders. Giles often gets the feeling no one comes to see them
other than the Home Oce. On visit after visit he sees how bravado battles with
vulnerability, extreme tension with politeness, self-harm with hours in the gym. A
number of my clients have been or are on suicide watch. In my experience the numbers
have increased, Giles said.
In the past, he used to explain human rights appeals to clients as a set of scales, with the
oence on one side and everything else family and private life, length of residency,
legal status, good behaviour weighed up on the other. But the scales just dont exist
anymore. Now theres only one outcome: not just a decision to deport, but a pursuit of
that to the bitter end.
Sitting opposite Giles was Jo Renshaw, also a partner in the rm, and head of
immigration. As they worked, periods of silent form-lling and email-writing were
punctuated by ringing mobiles, quickre questions: Does he live with his family?;
How much do you have in your bank account?; Do they need the pregnancy scan?.
Little remains private, once the Home Oce gets involved.
As Giles and Renshaw busied themselves, a paralegal entered the room. Andrzej on the
line hes under the impression he has a bail hearing on Friday. Andrzej is one of Giless
clients, who spent 30 months in prison for attempted robbery and was then served with
a deportation order. While he challenged the order, he was being held at Campseld
detention centre.
Andrzej had arrived from Poland lawfully, with his wife and two then three children
and had worked here lawfully. After his arrest, the family was moved into shared
emergency social services accommodation, where his daughter was abused by another
resident. Giles was challenging the decision to deport on the basis that Andrzejs children
were vulnerable and could not do without their fathers support, and his deportation had
been deferred until the judicial review could be considered. But in order to be released
from detention, Andrzej had to have a home address, at which point he ran into one of
many kinks in the system.
The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) organises accommodation for asylum
seekers and those applying for bail from an immigration detention centre, but because
the pool is limited, Giles explained, it takes a very long time to process applications. For
foreign nationals who have been to prison, it can take even longer. There is often little
communication with the probation service, so when NASS does eventually suggest a
possible address, it often ends up being rejected by probation because it is in a high
crime area, or in a house occupied by other ex-oenders, or otherwise deemed
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unsuitable. And that scenario can repeat itself two, three, four times over months, if not
years, during which time that person remains detained, said Giles.
Soon enough, Andrzej called directly. Giles tried to calm him, to explain that no, there
was no bail hearing; yes, he had tried social services, intending to persuade them to
support the argument against deportation, but they wouldnt respond. So what I would
recommend is you send them a letter saying, I want to be with my wife and children, I
want to know what I can do. I want to understand what is going on, please can you
provide a response urgently. He spelled it out. U-R-G-E-N-T-L-Y.
Giles speaks to all his clients in the same way, focused and supportive, but without
ummery, or much softening of blows. Both Giles and Renshaw were clear that it would
be wrong to give false encouragement. These people are very vulnerable and
marginalised, said Renshaw. They often have little idea of their rights. They are full of
hope, a lot of the time, that everything can be worked out. Thats a lethal combination
theyre ripe for people to tell them what they want to hear, and relieve them of a lot of
money for doing it.
If Giles took a case on, he was very committed, Renshaw said. Very smart, very forceful.
You have to be the Home Oce is very combative. Most of us deal with them at arms
length. But he has to talk to caseworkers, to people making decisions about detention
and tagging it would grind down anyone whos not as tough as he is.
As would the unhappiness immigration lawyers encounter nearly every day. Mary
Bosworth, a professor of criminology at Oxford University, spent 18 months studying
centres such as Campseld, where people are detained for anything from a few days to
years, generally with no idea of how long it will be. In her harrowing book, Inside
Immigration Detention, she described visiting the legal aid corridor where Giles sees his
clients just before renovations in 2013-14. The stench of sweat, fear and anxiety
was often overwhelming, wrote Bosworth. The accommodation blocks were standard
prison wings, complete with suicide netting, metal doors, metal staircases, shower
blocks with half-size doors enabling sta to see who is within. Sta warned Bosworth
not to believe men who wept because their children had been put into care. She
described levels of distress so dicult to witness that on a number of occasions I left
the centre abruptly, having reached the limits of my capacity to soak up other peoples
misery.
I asked Giles how he coped with the human misery he encounters daily. I think, over
the years, said Giles, I have managed by not taking it on. Not engaging with the
underlying facts, if you like. The things that have happened to somebody, or may
happen to somebody. Ive tried to concentrate instead on what Im doing what my role
is. Id much rather my client said, Tom has explained to me hes going to do this, that it
has this chance of success, than, Hes a good guy and hes always got time to chat. You
know?
Giles called another client. Peter arrived from Nigeria in the late 1980s and was given
indenite leave to remain that is, permission to settle in Britain. He had four children,
all British citizens. Fourteen years ago, when they were small, he was arrested for
attempting to import class-A drugs; he turned informant and served a criminal sentence.
Had Peter been a British citizen, he would have been allowed to go free after having
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served his time. But, because he was foreign, he was then detained while it was decided
whether he would be deported. This detention lasted a further three years. Giles
challenged the legitimacy of these three years of incarceration. The courts found in
Peters favour, and moreover ruled two years of the detention to be unlawful. He was
awarded damages. (Between 2011 and 2014, the Home Oce paid out 15m in
compensation for unlawful detention.)
The Home Oce was not able to deport Peter. But it responded by giving him only six
months leave to remain. He was technically allowed to work, but in practice this was
near-impossible. Ever since, he has had to reapply to stay every six months, at the cost of
a 649 fee to the Home Oce and a payment to Turpin Miller each time.
Last month, the fees rose by 25%, to 811 per person. For most visa applicants, this is
now added to the new NHS surcharge of 200 for each adult and child, per year.
Application for a standard two-and-a-half years leave to remain for a family of four now
costs 5,244. Those who cannot nd the money must leave the country when their
current visa expires, unless they can claim they are destitute the bar for proving which
is extremely high. Fees are also waived for victims of domestic abuse but only if the
spouse is British. Often, Renshaw said, clients who had scrimped and saved their fees in
the full trust that they were doing what the system required of them did not nd out
about rate rises until the last minute, meaning that they either had to leave the country
immediately or become overstayers, and thus illegal. She is increasingly defending
people who have eectively been administrated into illegality. (A Home oce
spokesperson, approached for comment, stated that It is only right we recover the costs
of running our immigration system by making sure that those who benet directly from
it contribute appropriately - so the expense to the UK taxpayer is less.)
With no steady work, Peter was in such arrears that his credit card had been stopped and
his bank account closed. Giles was applying for legal aid so that Peter could pay Turpin
Miller to appeal on his behalf to remain in Britain for three clear years at least; the legal
aid agency wanted proof of income, but having no bank account, Peter was nding it
dicult to satisfy them. The upshot is a form of terrorism, said Giles. Were not just
going to set up a system that makes it dicult for you to obtain the right to be here, were
going to carry that message through every part of your life, remind you of it every day.
Some weeks later Giles received an email from Peter, saying that he wouldnt be able to
send over his nancial documents as requested, because he had destroyed them. I
strongly believe that the legal aid oce works with the immigration department and I
have come to the conclusion that any document submitted to them would be used as
evidence against me in a charge of illegal employment. At home I do not open my door or
blind as I worry that the authorities are watching and are coming for me. Please do not be
oended that I am unable to provide the documents. Thank you sir.
iles, who is now 40, grew up in Stoke Newington, north London. His
parents split up when he was small, and he and his brother were raised by
his mother, who for 14 years was principal of Tower Hamlets College, and
her new partner. It was a politically engaged household. They argued about
issues at mealtimes and he was taken on marches against Thatcher and the
nuclear bomb. There was a strong feeling, he says, not too dissimilar to
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now, of a need to stand up against prejudice and discrimination.

He thought about becoming a teacher before taking a conversion course and going into
legal aid. Its a cliche, isnt it growing up in a lesbian household in the 80s, in Stoke
Newington what are you going to do? Join Ukip and end up an estate agent? As a shy
child who nevertheless would not give a point up, he could not imagine undertaking
the public performances required of a barrister, and so trained as a solicitor. He came to
Oxford because his wife had got a job at the council, and he admits he stalked Philip
Turpin, one of the rms partners, until he was hired.
Turpin Miller is eective and well-respected, and in 2012, at the Legal Aid Lawyer of the
Year awards, it was named rm of the year. But less than a year later, legal aid was cut
and the company lost about 70% of its legal aid work in immigration alone. In order to
survive and to fund exible rates for clients who had previously qualied for aid the
rm switched to more private work, where the client, rather than the government, pays
for representation.
Clients come to Turpin Miller through social services, childrens societies, womens
refuges or, for Giles, through detention centres and prisons. Though they have done as
well as they can under the circumstances Renshaw recently won legal aid lawyer of the
year in the social and welfare category the partners are acutely aware of how precarious
their working lives, and by extension the lives of their clients, have become.
Last summer, in his rst speech as secretary of state for justice, Michael Gove suggested
pro bono work should begin to replace legal aid, asking solicitors and barristers to look
into their consciences and see what they can do to ensure there is more equitable access
to justice, and eectively suggesting that individual charity compensate for shortfalls in
state funding. Giles was withering about this, pointing out that legal rms rich enough to
have pro bono units tend not to deal with asylum and immigration. Immigration is
highly complicated work and any solicitor who does not specialise in it would probably
be breaching professional rules to be undertaking it pro bono, says Richard Miller, head
of legal aid at the Law Society. One of the rules is that no solicitor must do any work for
with theyre not competent.Were struggling to survive, said Giles. Every time we do
a piece of work that doesnt pay it is no exaggeration to say were jeopardising our
future.
When it cut legal aid, the government promised a safety net for those in danger of a
breach of their human rights in the form of exceptional case funding. You can apply
directly [to the Legal Aid Agency], it says, helpfully, on gov.uk. You dont have to name
a solicitor. The trouble is that the forms are 14 pages long, and include questions like:
Please describe why you consider there is an arguable breach of substantive obligation.
It can take an experienced lawyer up to six hours to do one application; if it is
unsuccessful they do not get paid. It is possible to send a letter explaining why you
cannot represent yourself, but to construct a strong argument, it would probably help to
have a passing knowledge of case law.
In May 2013 Giles applied for exceptional case funding to represent a Lithuanian
woman, Teresa Gudanaviciene. She was working lawfully in the UK when she wounded
her violent, alcoholic partner with a knife, and received an 18-month prison sentence.
Her younger child was taken into care (the older one was an adult), and she was
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informed that at the end of her sentence she would be deported. Giles believed she could
appeal against the decision on human rights grounds. He duly applied for exceptional
case funding, and was rejected. He challenged the decision and eventually, in 2014,
along with ve other linked cases, the case reached the court of appeal, which found that
the bar for legal aid provision was set unlawfully high. Gudanaviciene was given legal aid
and her appeal against deportation was successful.
That was really important, said Renshaw. In 2013-14, before Gudanavicienes victory,
1,520 applications for exceptional case funding were made, 69% of which were for
family or immigration cases: 69 or 4.5% were granted, of which only one or two were
immigration cases. However, in the rst quarter of 2015, following Gudanavicienes
victory, 132 applications were made for exceptional funding for immigration cases, and
51 were granted. And this is the thing about Tom, Renshaw told me. A lot of us took
one look at the forms and thought, I dont have time to do that for nothing! But Tom
battled away applying, reapplying and in the end taking them to court. Thats what he
does; if he sees an issue that needs to be dealt with he will keep going.
It is an obvious point, but worth repeating: legal aid is necessary because it aims to give
everyone equal access to justice. Legal aid ensured that for a relatively low cost the
whole system worked, said Renshaw, and that is particularly true in Toms work. But,
she argues, if you get rid of the ability to put a case at all, because a client cannot pay to
ght it, you skew the system. And if you then remove people from the UK before they
can appeal a Home Oce decision well, the whole point of an appeal is to call people
to account. The rst decision isnt always right. And what happens when you undermine
that right of appeal either by removing legal aid or by requiring people to conduct their
appeal from overseas is that the quality of the rst decision deteriorates, because
theres no scrutiny.
The other issue illustrated by the Gudanaviciene case was the lengths to which the
government would go to prove a point. If legal aid had been provided, and a barrister
hired for her initial appeal, the whole thing would have cost 691. But because the
government refused her legal aid, and kept refusing even though the challenge moved
through to the high court and then the court of appeal, the case eventually involved 18
barristers, at a cost in excess of 600,000, not to mention an extra six months of
detention for Gudanaviciene (at a cost, according to gures entered into parliamentary
debate in late 2014, of 97 per day) and maintaining a child in care (between 131,000
and 135,000 per child per year, according to the National Audit Oce).
At the hearing, the presenting ocer said they were ready to concede, said Giles, but
they could not get permission to concede, because, I suspect, the Home Oce does not
concede deportation cases. It is the Home Oce that is dragging these things through
the courts, with the costs to the public purse and [the emotional] cost to everyone.
Discretion and common sense seem to have been taken out of the system.
Giless suspicions were bolstered in mid-November, when the president of the upper
tribunal, which considers appeals relating to asylum and immigration, published a
decision saying that he had the impression that the secretary of state [for the Home
Oce], as a matter of routine, applies for permission to appeal in every deportation
appeal [resolved in favour of the appellant]. Furthermore, he noted, the terms in which
these Home Oce applications were made were frequently generic, rather than engaging
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with the facts of the individual case and with the law, and that they were inundating
tribunals and threatening to impede legitimate work. If there is indeed a practice of this
kind it must be disapproved, he wrote. To slavishly apply for permission to appeal to
the upper tribunal in every deportation appeal resolved in favour of the appellant, if this
be the practice, is not a proper or legitimate invocation of this tribunals jurisdiction. (In
response, a Home Oce spokesperson told me that any decision to appeal a judgment
made by the courts is taken after careful consideration of the facts and when it is in the
public interest to do so.)
hen, during prime Ministers Questions in January, David Cameron

referred to a bunch of migrants, or when he pledged, last summer,
to halt the swarm attempting to make the crossing from Calais, his
language was nothing new. Britain has been worrying about outsiders
for a long time, while in fact, as Robert Winder has argued in his
magisterial book Bloody Foreigners, rather impressively muddling
along and largely accepting them.
But in the last couple of decades, it has become, for non-EU migrants, harder and harder
to arrive and, having arrived, to stay. The world has changed, radically: cheaper
international travel, digital communications, international terrorism and refugees eeing
wars have presented challenges previous governments have not had to face, or at least
not on such a scale. Yet this does not excuse tactics that have paved the way for
increasingly harsh policies.
Britain has expended considerable eort over the past decade in marking out (some)
foreign nationals as dangerous, unwelcome, and excludable, writes Mary Bosworth.
Eliding dierent categories of foreigner, starting with the bogus asylum seeker, before
moving to the terrorist and the foreign oender, various British governments have pitted
these rhetorical gures against the British citizen, shoring up a narrative of national
identity in a period of mass mobility.
This process has accelerated in recent years, and it is increasingly possible, especially
since the Tories achieved their majority, to detect what looks like a three-step process.
Step 1: talk as tough as possible about migrants. Step 2: write legislation that is tough on
migrants. Step 3: when it is challenged, claim that it is simply what the public wants. And
in the meantime use every possible administrative and judicial muscle to remove
migrants from the UK.
By the time Theresa May addressed the Conservative party conference last October, she
felt comfortable claiming that the asylum system was so open to abuse that it was just
another way of getting here to work which meant it was impossible to build a
cohesive society wages are forced down even further while some people are forced out
of work altogether.
In making this claim, May was undeterred by the fact that her own departments
research has found no statistically signicant displacement of UK natives from the
labour market in periods when the economy is strong.
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ne morning in late September, the main hall of the Royal Courts of Justice
in London echoed with the crash of security belts as bags were searched at
the entrance. At the centre, gazed down upon by portraits of men in
ermine and wigs, were the cause lists, detailing the cases to be heard that
day. Nearby was a stand on which was pasted a copy of the Magna Carta. It
looked like a colour photocopy someone had taken in a rush, and
completed a very English impression of beauty, vaulting power, and lashings of
amateurishness.
In Court 68, appeals were being heard from lawyers for two oenders, Courtney
Byndloss, a Jamaican national, and Kevin Kiarie, a Kenyan. Both were challenging
decisions to deport them before they could appeal from within the UK. Kiarie, whose
parents have indenite leave to remain, and who has lived in England for 19 of his 23
years, was Giless client. Everyone in the small windowless court was aware of the
importance of this case: if the two men were successful, the governments policy of
deport rst, appeal later would be dealt a major blow, and many thousands of
migrants, both oenders and the far greater number of non-oenders, would benet.
The court of appeal is dierent to what courtroom dramas on TV lead one to expect.
There is almost no concession to lay observers, theoretically welcome though they might
be. Everyone is already familiar with the bare bones of the case, so bewigged barristers
plunge directly into the ner points of case law. Behind them junior counsel, also in
wigs, ap through thick folders, looking for page references and omissions. Behind the
junior counsel sit a row of solicitors who, that morning, included Giles, whose bright
blue shirt stood out against all the black suits and gowns. And at the front of the room sit
the judges, who do not wear wigs. Far from being impassive adjudicators, the judges get
stuck in, running proceedings in a tough and not always polite manner.
Richard Drabble QC, who has a slight stoop, a lovely smile and a tendency to mumble,
argued for Kiarie: how could he appeal against deportation while in Kenya a country he
did not know without access to British lawyers, witnesses, or supporting material such
as probation records, or medical records? A mention of psychiatric papers caused a urry
of scorn from Lord Justices Richards, McCombe, who made full use of impressive saltand-pepper eyebrows, and Elias, sceptical, old and tiny, almost Dickensian in his highbacked chair. Manjit Gill QCs argument about the rights of Byndlosss children produced
a splutter of impatience from Richards: If you have a speaking note, lets get on with it!
The atmosphere changed abruptly when Richard Keen, Baron Keen of Elie, former chair
of the Scottish Conservative party, stood to speak. Keen, who is the advocate general for
Scotland, had intervened at the last minute to argue for the home secretary. What is
being reviewed? began Keen, who is a big man, sleek with condence. A decision of
the secretary of state. He took immediate and direct aim at the characters of Kiarie and
his co-defendant, using the phrase foreign national criminal as often as possible. Both
have shown a disregard for the law of the UK, and therefore there is a public interest in
removing them from the UK, and therefore policy reects that public interest and if
that means removing them pending their appeal then so be it. That is the view of
parliament.
There was more of the same the next day when Keen, wearing a pink and white checked
shirt under his QCs silks, pointed out that some immigration appeals do already occur
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out of country, and if necessary an appellant can always be brought back to defend him
or herself. (Although, as Baroness Helena Kennedy QC has pointed out during debates
about the immigration bill, only 13% of out-of-country appeals succeed, compared to
an average of around four in 10 made in country.) Keen moved the appeals be refused.
In response, Drabble, whose mumble had completely disappeared, took direct aim at the
likelihood of anyone ever being brought back, and at the general breakdown of due
process. You cant proceed on the basis that the tribunal will somehow muddle through.
Thats not an acceptable way to run a procedurally fair system. Furthermore, It is a
major mistake of principle to allow the gravity of what is alleged against my client to
diminish procedural protection. That cannot be the right approach.
Three weeks later, unusually swiftly where these things are concerned, Richards,
McCombe and Elias found against Kiarie and Byndloss, arguing that it was perfectly
possible to continue their appeals from abroad.
Renshaw thinks that judges are increasingly being forced into a corner by a home
secretary intent on incorporating a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants
(Mays own words) into legislation, meaning, as Renshaw put it, that the judiciary in
some ways have little choice they are simply implementing the law.
There has been some pushback from the House of Lords. In their debates, manylords
made clear their discomfort with the speed at which a constantly changing bill was being
pushed through the government alone has made more than 300 amendments, on top of
amendments proposed and voted on by lords and MPs. They also criticised what they
saw as unnecessary hardships being visited on migrants. They voted, among other
things, to allow asylum seekers to work if their claims had not been processed within six
months currently asylum seekers live on 5 a day, and when they can nally work, the
jobs they are allowed to do are severely restricted and to require a court order to detain
anyone for more than 28 days.
n early March, Giless client Andrzej won his appeal against deportation, but he
had already been removed a situation that will arise more and more when the
deport rst, appeal later measure in the immigration bill comes into general
eect.
Peter, meanwhile, was granted legal aid but the court of appeal refused his
request for an extension of his visa. Its a bad ending, said Giles, then corrected
himself. Its denitely not an ending. We need to start again and challenge it again. I
hope he can be strong enough to go through it all again.
It is not an ending for Kiarie either, at least not yet: as soon as the court of appeal
decision came through last autumn Giles applied for legal aid so that he could take the
case further. This was granted, and the appeal should come before the supreme court at
some point later this year.
Even Teresa Gudanaviciene had been forced to go another round with the Home Oce.
Having been given exceptional case funding, she and Giles fought the decision to deport
her, and won their case in the rst-tier tribunal. The Home Oce refused to accept this
decision and challenged it in the upper tribunal which decided that there had in fact
11/12
4/17/2016
been no error of law and that she could stay. I spoke to her yesterday, said Giles, when
he told me about it. What did she say? She just said, I dont know what to say. Thank
you.
Some names have been changed
Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, or sign up to the long read weekly
email here.
This article was amended on 14 April 2016. An earlier version referred to Boris
Johnsons Henley efdom.
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The lawyer who takes the cases no one

asylum or domestic violence be it length of residency, a job oer, investment, marriage

iles is a partner at Turpin Miller, a legal aid rm in east Oxford. When we

now, of a need to stand up against prejudice and discrimination.

hen, during prime Ministers Questions in January, David Cameron

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