50 Nigerians to face deportation next month

UP to 50 Nigerians, mainly families of Irish-born children, are expected to be deported from Ireland on a charter plane next month.

The mass deportation marks a sharp rise this year in the eviction of failed asylum seekers and non-national families of Irish-born children on charter planes.

Publishing new interim guidelines on deportation, the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) yesterday expressed concern at the manner in which deportations were being carried out and urged gardaí to comply with European and international obligations when deporting people from the country.

The IRC interim guidelines state:

No person should be deported until all proper legal remedies have been exhausted. (Last April, 12 Nigerians were deported even though gardaí knew their lawyers had initiated proceedings in the courts. One of the families, the Olaniarn family, has since been flown back.)

No minors should be deported unless accompanied by parents or appropriate guardians. (In one incident last year, three teenagers from one family were deported unaccompanied.)

Particular attention should be paid to the rights of children in the deportation process. (In a recent case, two infants were taken in, without change of clothes, as ‘social admissions’ to a Dublin hospital and held for a period of days while their mother was held in prison apparently for deportation.)

Gardaí should avoid instilling fear into immigrants by sending unreasonable numbers of officers into homes at unreasonable hours.

Human rights and dignity of deportee should be respected. (In one recent case, an African woman and her two children were verbally abused and humiliated.)

Deportations should be independently monitored.

Next month’s deportation marks a steady rise in the use of charter flights by garda authorities.

In April, 35 Nigerians were deported. The previous month, 55 Romanians and five Moldovans were sent home.

The IRC believes increasing number of families of Irish born children are now being deported. These parents lost their automatic right to remain in the country following a Supreme Court ruling last year.