MEN due to be deported to Jamaica tomorrow are facing barriers to access legal advice, campaigners have warned. 

The Home Office wants to deport up to 50 men to Jamaica, including the fathers of young children and those who arrived in Britain as teenagers. 

The Morning Star understands that six of those booked on the flight were transferred straight from prison to a short-term holding facility (STHF) in Manchester. Unlike immigration removal centres, STHFs have no provisions for detainees to access legal advice surgeries. 

A letter signed by over 60 lawyers and campaign groups to Home Secretary Priti Patel highlighted concerns that the sites lack provisions which would enable them to have proper access to justice in the days before the flight. 

“Having only been notified of their removal date a matter of days ago, many of those on the flight urgently require legal advice as to the lawfulness of their removal,” the letter reads. 

The group of lawyers claim that the conditions in STHFs is “restricting the ability of the men to obtain access to effective legal representation.” 

Black Activist Rising Against Cuts (Barac) founder Zita Holbourne, who has been supporting the people due on the flight, told the Morning Star that people have not had sufficient time to access justice. 

It’s believed that the men were only given up to two weeks’ notice of the flight, with some notified just last week. 

“When people have to get legal representation really fast and at the last minute, it could be any random solicitor they called and maybe they are not experts or specialists in immigration,” she said, adding that the flight had been “rushed.” 

Other issues have also been raised about mobile phone failures in one wing in Brook House detention centre and restricted access to the computer room in Colnbrook centre, preventing detainees being able to speak to lawyers and pass on documents. 

 “All of those things are denying access to justice,” she said. 

Ms Holbourne said that previous flights had seen deportees detained a few months before their removal date, allowing more time to prepare for their cases. 

When asked why she thought such little notice was given, Ms Holbourne replied: “We’re in a lockdown, it’s coming up to Christmas season, everything is sort of cut off and isolated, so perhaps they thought that if they did it like this there would be less of a noise, less of an opportunity for people to campaign, and less opportunity for people to find legal representation.”

Jacqueline McKenzie, a lawyer who represented many of the victims of the Windrush scandal, said that for there to be proper access to justice, detainees must have “access to computer rooms round the clock and free telephone calls and the Home Office should be facilitating them having access to quality lawyers or legal aid.”

At least seven people have now had their deportations deferred by the Home Office.

In the Commons on Monday, Home Office Minister Chris Philp accused lawyers of purposefully launching last-minute legal claims to remove people off Wednesday’s flight. 

“We do suffer astonishingly high levels of legal attrition on these flights, largely as a result of legal claims, often made at the very very last minute, sometimes I wonder perhaps even intentionally at the last minute,” he said. 

In February, over 20 people were taken off a deportation flight to Jamaica in an 11th-hour reprieve in the Court of Appeal based on the assertion that deportees at Brook House were not given adequate access to legal representation due to power outages. 

Ms Holbourne said that one person who was taken off that flight has since been granted leave to remain, found work and is living happily with his children and partner.

“He was never meant to be put on that flight in the first place,” she said. “The only reason he got off was because of the phone signal challenge. If that hadn’t been an issue he would have been deported now.”

The campaigner said the case demonstrated that the Home Office’s argument that it is deporting serious criminals to protect the British public “does not stand up.” 

The Home Office has been contacted for comment.