In recent years, Northern Ireland has been the shield that has stopped the most extreme and isolationist ambitions of British conservatives. It softened the consequences of Brexit, with the Ireland Protocol, and its courts have now dealt a serious blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to deport immigrants to Rwanda. Magistrate Michel Humphreys ruled this Monday that the Illegal Migration Law, the text that provides legal support for expulsions to the African country, contravenes fundamental parts of the so-called Windsor Framework Agreement, signed at the beginning of last year by London and Brussels. That pact put an end to a long period of confrontation between the United Kingdom and the EU, by correcting the most controversial sections of the so-called Ireland Protocol. In turn, this treaty, essential for Brexit to go ahead, defined the fit of the Northern Irish territory in the scenario created by the British exit from the community club.
The judge of the High Court of Northern Ireland believes that the migration law conflicts with the defense of human rights contemplated in all these pacts, which sought to preserve the validity of the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement of 1998, by which achieved peace in a region tormented by decades of sectarian violence. Judge Humphreys also points out the contradiction between some sections of Sunak’s new law and the European Convention on Human Rights, whose compliance the Strasbourg Court ensures.
The court decision responds to appeals brought by both the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and lawyers for a 16-year-old asylum seeker from Iran who resides in Belfast after arriving in the United Kingdom as an unaccompanied minor. . He arrived on a small boat that crossed the English Channel, from France, and assured, when beginning the procedures, that he would be killed or end up in prison if the immigration authorities returned him to his country.
Sunak, who this Monday once again promised that he would disobey any attempt by the European Court of Human Rights to stop flights to Rwanda, has already responded to Judge Humphreys’ decision. His Government, he has announced, will appeal the sentence at the next hearing set by the judge for the end of May. “This decision does not represent any change with respect to the operational plans prepared to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda starting in July, nor does it question the legality of the Rwanda Security Law. [el segundo texto aprobado por el Parlamento, para evitar que los tribunales cuestionen la seguridad del país africano]”, said the prime minister. “I have always made it very clear that the commitments agreed in the Good Friday Agreement must be interpreted with the original intention with which they were drafted, and not to use the text as a cover to include issues such as illegal immigration,” Sunak said.
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