Family in bid to block deportation

STUDENTS, politicians, trade union officials and anti-racism campaigners yesterday gathered outside the Dáil to support the case of an asylum-seeker family facing deportation.

A High Court battle will begin today determining whether Nigerian mother Elizabeth Onasanwo and four of her five children will succeed in having deportation orders against them overturned.

A fifth child, 18-year-old Christina, is not included in today’s case but is separately fighting deportation. The plight of Christina, who last year received her Leaving Certificate results on the same day as her deportation order, has been taken up by the Union of Students in Ireland while the family’s case has been widely publicised.

Elizabeth’s 15-year-old, Busola, is missing on the run, fearful of being sent home to Nigeria, while another brother is being treated for schizophrenia. The youngest daughter, six-year-old Bolu, is now in the care of friends. Sixteen TDs, including Labour and Fine Gael leaders, MEPs, and other groups have appealed to Justice Minister Michael McDowell to allow Elizabeth and her family to stay on compassionate and humanitarian grounds.

However, Mr McDowell has refused to intervene, saying the integrity of the asylum system had to be maintained. Elizabeth, who suffered a breakdown and threatened to commit suicide last August as the State attempted to deport her, has been in and out of psychiatric care ever since. She saw her sister die after a botched female circumcision before she fled Nigeria in 1999 when her house was burnt to the ground by militant youths, who accused her of stealing from them.

Christina, who goes to college, cannot be considered together with the rest of her family in today’s judicial review since she is now over 18. “What Christina has gone through is just terrible,” said Rosanna Flynn of Residents Against Racism.

“She is very frightened of female genital mutilation as her own aunt died through that same procedure.”