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Migrant rights campaigners rally to urge Jamaica to refuse to accept imminent deportation flight

MIGRANT rights campaigners held a rally today to urge Jamaica to refuse to accept an imminent Home Office deportation flight to the island. 

A small crowd gathered outside the Jamaican high commission in London’s Kensington district to call on the island’s authorities not to allow the charter flight on August 11, due to carry people who arrived in Britain as children, to go ahead. 

At least four men who were booked to be on the flight have since had their deportations cancelled, including M McDonald, 29, a father of seven, who was interviewed by the Morning Star last week. 

Another man, known as TP, has also had his ticket cancelled. The 21-year-old has lived in Britain since the age of three months and was in and out of care as a child. 

His foster father Wayne Forbes was at the protest and told the Morning Star that TP’s mental health has “deteriorated in front of our eyes” since he was detained last week. Mr Forbes said that the 21-year-old had been denied his medication for bipolar and depression while in detention. 

“Him being taken off the flight, it takes the immediate stress out of the situation, but we are still dealing with the deportation issue,” he said. The mental impact of the ordeal will have long-term consequences, he added. 

Mr Forbes said he put “a lot” of the blame on the Jamaican authorities, pointing out that other countries “turn these flights around.” 

He added: “It’s inhumane and barbaric what the Jamaican government and what the UK government [are] doing to us.”

Last year, the Jamaican authorities reached an agreement with the Home Office that the latter would not deport anyone who arrived in Britain under the age of 12. However, the Jamaican high commission said that the agreement was specific to a charter flight in December 2020. 

Campaign group Movement for Justice, which organised the protest, said that the island’s authorities should do the same for next week’s flight. The group said it had spoken to six detainees who arrived to Britain as children. 

Another protester said that the father of her two-year-old child is among those facing deportation.

She told the Morning Star that the ordeal had given her “anxiety,” adding: “My son is now having to be without his dad there. We had plans to go see the dinosaurs and now he’s asking me: ‘Where’s dinosaurs, where’s dad?”

The Home Office has previously claimed that all those it has sought to remove on such flights are guilty of “serious violent crimes,” but Movement for Justice said that the majority have committed non-violent drug offences. 

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