Immigration and Migration

High Court orders reinstatement of trafficking support in public order disqualification case

High Court orders reinstatement of trafficking support in public order disqualification case The High Court has ordered the Home Secretary to reinstate support to a potential victim of trafficking where the Home Secretary had made a public order disqualification and cancelled his support. The case is R (EPS) v Secretary of State ...

Supreme Court addresses fairness concerns in deprivation appeals

Supreme Court addresses fairness concerns in deprivation appeals Having been given a very hard time of it in the Court of Appeal, the Home Secretary has finally been vindicated in her series of appeals concerning the process for depriving people of their British citizenship. The Supreme Court has ...

Free Movement Weekly Immigration Newsletter #103

Free Movement Weekly Immigration Newsletter #103 Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Plans for mandatory digital ID for everyone in the UK were dropped last week, although the government said that they will still be mandating that right-to-work checks are carried out digitally. The government’s position ...

Care home refused permission in challenge to revocation of sponsor licence for underpaying staff

Care home refused permission in challenge to revocation of sponsor licence for underpaying staff Permission for judicial review and interim relief has been refused in a case where the claimant care home sought to challenge the revocation of its sponsor licence. THe revocation was because that the Home Secretary was satisfied that staff were ...

High Court clarifies position on eligibility for Home Detention Curfew

High Court clarifies position on eligibility for Home Detention Curfew Unless and until a person has been notified that a decision has been made to make a deportation order against them, they are not liable to removal for the purpose of section 259 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The ...

Safeguarding concerns raised in report on detention in short-term holding facilities

Safeguarding concerns raised in report on detention in short-term holding facilities HM Chief Inspector of Prisons has published a report following an unannounced inspection of the Home Office’s short-term holding facilities in immigration reporting centres in October last year. Concerningly, right at the outset of the report the Chief Inspector notes ...

Senior President of Tribunals publishes annual report for 2025

Senior President of Tribunals publishes annual report for 2025 The Senior President of Tribunals has published his annual report for 2025. The section on the Upper Tribunal (IAC) notes that it “appears very likely” that workloads in the Upper Tribunal “will increase significantly” because of the increase in the ...

Important Court of Appeal ruling on children’s settlement applications

Important Court of Appeal ruling on children’s settlement applications The case concerns a settlement application made on behalf of a child under paragraph 297 of Part 8 which was instead granted as limited leave under Appendix FM because although her father was a British citizen resident in the UK, ...

Good character requirement not met in case with a history of torture

Good character requirement not met in case with a history of torture A claimant has been refused permission for judicial review to challenge the refusal of his naturalisation application on good character grounds. The decision followed an oral permission hearing and the case is R (BSD) v Secretary of State for the ...

Briefing: the sorry state of the UK asylum system

Briefing: the sorry state of the UK asylum system In this briefing we will take a look at what is really going on with the main features of the contemporary asylum system: arrivals, the backlog, detention, removal and resettlement. The information is drawn mainly from the quarterly immigration statistics ...

Limited further details on new asylum and immigration appeal system emerge

Limited further details on new asylum and immigration appeal system emerge The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has disclosed some further details on the new immigration and asylum appeal body. The plans are contained in a letter to the chair of the Justice Committee. Some further hints at the process behind the ...

Permission refused in discrimination challenge to immigration raids

Permission refused in discrimination challenge to immigration raids A charity has been refused permission to challenge “Operation Tornado” on the grounds that it has an indirectly discriminatory effect on people with the protected characteristic of disability, race (colour) and sex. “Operation Tornado” is what the government has named ...

Syrian nationals challenge proposed removal to Bulgaria

Syrian nationals challenge proposed removal to Bulgaria The Upper Tribunal has heard a challenge by a cohort of Syrian nationals regarding the certification of their asylum claims on the basis that they could be returned to a safe third country, in this case Bulgaria. It is believed ...

Immigration roundup podcast: December 2025

Immigration roundup podcast: December 2025 That’s officially a wrap on 2025, as Sonia and Barry run through December’s various happenings, including the final statement of changes for the year and our latest resources on the earned settlement proposals. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act ...

Free Movement Weekly Immigration Newsletter #102

Free Movement Weekly Immigration Newsletter #102 Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Last week UNHCR published their legal observations on the government’s proposed changes to asylum. The agency said that the proposal to grant refugees only two and a half years’ leave at a time is likely to ...

High Court finds the Home Secretary’s approach to making public order disqualification decisions is unlawful

High Court finds the Home Secretary’s approach to making public order disqualification decisions is unlawful In the first substantive judgment concerning the use of “public order disqualification” powers in trafficking cases under s.63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, the High Court has found that the Home Secretary’s general approach has been unlawful to ...

More of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 now in force

More of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 now in force Regulations were made just before the Christmas break which brought more of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 into force from 5 January 2026. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025 received Royal Assent on 2 December ...

Court of Appeal dismisses deportation appeal despite evidence of rehabilitation

Court of Appeal dismisses deportation appeal despite evidence of rehabilitation In Majera v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ 1597, the Court of Appeal considered the right approach to the ‘very compelling circumstances’ test in deportation cases where the foreign criminal claims to have been rehabilitated. ...

Free Movement review of 2025

Free Movement review of 2025 It has become an end-of-year tradition, for good or ill, for me to review what’s been going on in the immigration law world, look ahead and share a little of where we are at here on Free Movement. I find ...

The Home Office’s unsafe journeys policy is dangerous

The Home Office’s unsafe journeys policy is dangerous Despite a series of successful legal challenges against it, the Home Office’s current policy on handling requests to defer or be excused from biometric enrolment where an applicant cannot travel safely to a visa application centre remains unfit for purpose. ...

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