The home secretary must return an asylum seeker and her son to the UK just months after ordering their removal, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The 45-year-old woman and her son were flown back to Nigeria in January.
Last month, an immigration court said Theresa May had not considered the “best interests” of the boy, five.
Meanwhile, a chartered flight that would have returned 59 asylum seekers to Afghanistan was aborted after a last-minute court order.
‘Flawed decision’
An appeal from Mrs May’s lawyers against the decision of the immigration court in the case of the mother and her son was rejected by Lord Justice McCombe.
He said it was “impossible” to conclude that the decision was “wrong in principle”.
The appeal hearing in London was told that plans were in place to fly the pair back to London on Thursday.
The Nigerian woman was discovered working illegally in a shop in London using a false Dutch passport, in 2007.
She applied to stay in the UK and said she had been in the country since 1991, but her application was turned down.
The woman then claimed asylum in 2010, saying she feared persecution and ill-treatment in her home country.
By then, she had given birth to a son.
Her removal was secured and the pair left the UK.
But the Upper Immigration Tribunal ruled last month that the home secretary had failed to take into account the impact on the boy or mental health problems suffered by his mother, and the “risk of that degenerating in the Nigerian context”.
The tribunal said Mrs May’s decision was “flawed” because the boy’s interests should have been a “primary consideration”.
On Tuesday night, a Home Office flight that would have taken asylum seekers to Afghanistan was cancelled after lawyers for some of the men successfully argued the country was no longer safe.
It will be recalled that 32 year old Afusat Saliu was deported from the UK after a campaign to keep her in the country failed. There was a campaign against her deportation on the grounds that her two daughters, 4 and 2 (pictured above) face the possibility of female genital mutilation in Nigeria.
Afusat had fled Nigeria in 2011, claiming her stepmother had threatened to circumcise her first daughter. She was pregnant again at the time and claimed she feared her second daughter would also be subjected to FGM.
Afusat and her two daughters were arrested on May 28th by the UK Border Agency and although over 120,000 people signed a petition calling on the Home Office not to deport her, the campaign failed as the woman and her kids were put on a flight back to Nigeria yesterday June 4th.
“We consider every claim for asylum on its individual merits and in this case, the claimant was not considered to be in need of protection. The case has gone through the proper legal process and our decision has been supported by the UK courts on five separate occasions, while the European Court of Human Rights declined an application to halt the removal.” UK Home Office said.
Afusat’s lawyer said she’s spoken to her since she returned to Nigeria and said Afusat is quite upset at being sent back and plans to continue fighting her case until she’s allowed back in the UK.