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Tomorrow the Home Office will try to deport tens of people to Jamaica, taking them from their homes & families. The government claims that everyone booked on the flight is a ‘serious criminal’. But we need to reject the idea that ‘criminality’ justifies banishment. #StopThePlane
Since 2006, the Home Office has been prioritising the deportation of people with criminal records. Targets have been set, thresholds have been lowered, and access to justice has been decimated.
As Home Secretary, Theresa May made attacking human rights into a sport, especially the right to family life. She promised to ‘deport criminals first, and hear appeals later’, a policy ruled unlawful in 2017.
Since the Windrush Scandal, Windrush migrants has been contrasted with ‘illegal immigrants’ + ‘criminals’. But Windrush migrants are part of the same families & communities with newer arrivals. And Windrush migrants with criminal records have been excluded from protections
People who have been criminalised are not a human type (“the criminals”), but individuals with varied experiences and complex stories. As we know, prisons lock away poor and marginalised people, and black people are much more likely to be criminalised than other groups.
Black people are more likely to be stopped, arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced to (lengthy) prison terms, and all of this propels those without British citizenship towards deportation. Racist police and prisons fuel mass deportation flights.
The Home Office will try to deport anyone with a sentence >12 months. But ppl are deported for non-custodial convictions, if their offences are considered ‘persistent'. And with Operation Nexus ppl are deported on basis of 'non-convictions’! (mostly for alleged gang involvement)
When we accept that ‘criminals’ should be deported, we ignore the racist character of criminalisation. Who is surveilled in public space? Why do only some young people get labelled ‘gang-members’? Who ends up in prison for possession and supply o widely used drugs?
The CJS ignores most forms of social harm. We therefore need to challenge unjust deportations whoever they target, moving beyond ‘innocence’. The struggle against racist criminal justice and racist borders are one and the same #EndDeportations
If you want to find out more about deportations and the 'foreign criminals' story hear are some good reads from @LukeEdeNoronha and @graciemaybe :
https://www.vice.com/en/article/nne5zb/mass-deportation-to-jamaica https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4589-end-deportation-flights-resisting-the-new-authoritarianism
https://www.vice.com/en/article/nne5zb/mass-deportation-to-jamaica https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4589-end-deportation-flights-resisting-the-new-authoritarianism
