A DEPORTATION flight to Jamaica left today with no more than three people on board after activists tried to prevent detainees from being taken to the plane.

The majority of people booked onto the 1am flight from Birmingham on Wednesday morning were removed in the days and hours before it took off, with legal challenges and a Covid-19 outbreak at Colnbrook detention centre leading their removal to be deferred.

Campaigners said that only two or three people of the original 50 were on the 360-seat flight — the lowest number of people carried on any recent charter flight to Jamaica. 

On Tuesday evening, activists from Stop the Plane blocked the entrance to Brook House detention centre near Gatwick airport, where some of the men due to be deported were being held, in a bid to prevent them from being transported to the plane. 

In a statement, the group said: “We reject the legitimacy of the entire deportation regime. It is premised on racist notions of black, brown and racialised people.”

Stop the Plane activists were detained overnight for their action, but most had been released by the time the Morning Star went to print today. 

Those scheduled to be removed included at least 10 people who had lived in Britain since childhood and at least five who were identified as being potential victims of trafficking. Others were said to have serious health conditions.

For the first time since the Windrush scandal broke in 2018, the Home Office had also attempted to deport non-criminals aboard the flight.

Zita Holbourne, national chairwoman of anti-racist group BARAC UK, said it was troubling that people with serious health conditions, disabilities, and those who came to the UK as children were targeted for deportation.

“The deportations are racist and inhumane, but also flying a 350-seat aircraft for five people impacts on climate change, disproportionately the global South,” she added. 

Campaigners said the flight was operated by Spanish airline Iberojet.

“It would be good for Spanish trade unions to support our campaign and call on the airlines not to be complicit in these racist immigration policies,” Ms Holbourne said.  

The Home Office said: “Those individuals with no right to be in the UK and foreign national offenders should be in no doubt that we will do whatever is necessary to remove them. 

“This is what the public rightly expects and why we regularly operate flights to different countries.”