Home Office lifts deportation order on man who has lived in UK for 50 years

The Home Office has lifted a deportation order against a 62-year-old man who has lived in Britain for 50 years, after criticism of its long-running attempts to send him to Barbados, the country he left as a child.

Officials wrote to Tony Hall on Tuesday to tell him the order had been revoked. His case had been reported in the Guardian the day before. The Home Office said the timing was a coincidence.

Fifty years in Britain

Mr Hall arrived in London aged 12 in 1976 to join his parents and five older sisters, who had come to Britain as part of the Windrush generation. He has no surviving relatives in Barbados and has not been back since.

He had repeatedly tried to have the deportation order lifted, arguing that as the child of Windrush-generation parents he had the right to remain.

The Home Office had said he was liable for deportation because of a 2001 conviction for conspiracy to rob and having a firearm with intent. Police had stopped Mr Hall and his co-defendants before the robbery took place. He spent eight years in prison.

Seventeen years in limbo

Officials had been trying to deport him since he finished his sentence in 2009. In January 2010 he was put on a flight to Barbados, but was returned to London on the same plane the next day. Officials in Barbados appear to have been unwilling to issue him with papers because of how long he had lived in the UK.

Because of his uncertain immigration status, he has been barred from working, renting a home, claiming benefits or receiving full NHS care. He had argued that he should not go on being punished for a crime committed 25 years ago, for which he had served his sentence.

His lawyer, Naga Kandiah of MTC Solicitors, welcomed the decision but said: "The historical injustice at the heart of this case remains unresolved. For over 17 years, our client has endured fear, detention, relentless uncertainty, exclusion from work and housing, and ultimately destitution. The Home Office may revoke a deportation order, but it cannot give our client back 17 years of his life."

Mr Hall said the long period of limbo had been very difficult, and that he was relieved to have "the chance to live in the country I call home without fear".

Windrush commissioner intervened

Clive Foster, the Windrush commissioner, an independent advocate for people affected by the scandal, had also urged the Home Office to take a compassionate approach.

Fiona Bawdon, author of a recent study of people with uncertain immigration status, said: "Either the government wants to do right by all of those it harmed or it doesn't. Each time they treat someone in the way they treated Tony Hall, other Windrush victims, even those who've now had their citizenship confirmed, feel as if they could still be at risk, as if they are not really seen as British and this could be taken away from them again."

The Windrush scandal came to light in 2018, when it emerged that people who had lived legally in Britain for decades were being wrongly detained, denied services and in some cases deported.