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Immigration - in brief (15)

01 October 2007

UK: Airline refuses to carry deportees: The government's immigration policy suffered a serious blow in September when XL Airways announced that it would not charter its planes to the Home Office to carry deportees. The airline was one of several, including British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, which had been warned that they would face direct action by activists to end instances of abuse. Some of the evidence was published in The Independent newspaper (5.10.07), and there is a dossier of more than 200 cases where deportees have claimed physical and mental mistreatment by British escort teams. Campaigners have accused the airlines of profiting from the forced deportations and The Independent has revealed that "the Home Office paid British Airways more than £4.3 million in 2006 to carry failed asylum seekers and their escorts." In another new development the Home Office said that "its Borders and Immigration Agency, which is in charge of funding the removals, recognised the right of the captains of aircraft to refuse to carry a detainee for "security or commercial reasons"". In 2001 the Vereingung Cockpit pilots association in Germany instructed their pilots not to take part in involuntary deportations and to ask deportees if they were willing to be transported, (see Statewatch Vol 11 no 1). XL Airways has a fleet of 24 aircraft and one of them was used in the deportation of 18 children and 14 adults from the UK to the Democratic Republic of Congo in February 2007.

Independent 5, 10.10.07; National coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns website: http://www.ncadc.org.uk