The High Court refused an application for leave to seek judicial review of the Minister for Justice and Equality’s 14 December 2011 refusal to revoke a deportation order against a Nigerian father. The application was made ex parte. The court did not grant leave, and the deportation order remained in place.
The order, made in March 2010, concerned the father, identified in the judgment as Mr Smith. His wife and children were also applicants. One child, Charles Smith, was born in Ireland and was an Irish citizen. The family argued that deporting the father would affect Charles’s ability to enjoy his rights as an EU citizen, relying on the Court of Justice of the European Union’s ruling in Zambrano.
The Minister had rejected an earlier request to revoke the order in October 2011, concluding that Charles would most likely remain in Ireland with his mother and would not be forced to leave the EU. A second application, made in November, relied on the same dependency argument and on the fact that another child had received temporary permission to remain. The family’s solicitors also acknowledged that Mr Smith had previously given the Minister an untruthful account of whether he had left Ireland, and said he had travelled to the UK in or around September 2010 and returned in June 2011.
The court held that the grant of temporary permission to the other child was not, by itself, a new fact capable of making the deportation order unlawful. It said the second application repeated the Zambrano argument already considered and rejected in October. Section 3(11) of the Immigration Act 1999 could not be used to delay an existing deportation order through repeated applications based on the same ground without a material change or new intervening event.
The applicants also relied on a UK tribunal decision and argued that the Minister had not properly analysed the effect of deportation on family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The High Court said the original 2010 deportation decision had included a detailed assessment of the family’s Article 8 rights and the Irish citizen child’s constitutional rights. That decision had not been challenged and could not be reopened through the second revocation application. The court also noted that the November application did not substantively advance an Article 8 case.
The judge concluded that no stateable case had been made for leave. He added that the court would refuse the application in any event, citing Mr Smith’s repeated breaches of immigration laws and his false account of his movements. The application for leave was refused.