Jamaicans In The UK Urge Government To Stop Cooperating With Deportation Requests

News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, THURS. Feb. 6, 2020: Protestors from the UK-based Movement For Justice are urging the Jamaican government to stop cooperating with deportation requests from the Boris Johnson administration.

Members held a protest on Feb. 3rd outside the High Commission in London to make the request ahead of the February 11, 2020 charter flight of 50 deportees to Jamaica.

On Twitter, the group said it has spoken to a detainee who was so ill immigration officials had to use an ambulance to take to him to detention but he is still set to be deported even as his doctors said he is not fit to fly.

The group calls it racist but British Prime Minister Johnson has vowed that the deportation of dozens of Caribbean nationals will go ahead, amid evidence that a claim that they are all “serious criminals” is untrue.

“The people of this country will think it is right to send back foreign national offenders,” he said.

There has been one deportation flight to Jamaica since the Windrush scandal erupted in May 2018. One scheduled to leave in April 2018 was cancelled for reasons the Home Office did not disclose.

Guyanese roots Labor MP, David Lammy said “The Home Office should not be chartering deportation flights to Jamaica and other parts of the Caribbean before the much-delayed Windrush Lessons Learned Review has been published.”

“How can the Home Secretary be sure she is not making the same mistakes?” he questioned on Twitter.