The High Court has dismissed a Zimbabwean man’s application to quash a deportation order, rejecting four remaining grounds of challenge. The judgment did not quash the order or decide the underlying protection claim afresh.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as D.S. (Zimbabwe), said he left Zimbabwe because he feared persecution as a supporter of the opposition MDC. He said he travelled to Ireland in August 2016 using a false South African passport. His original asylum form gave his nationality as South African, but he later described himself as Zimbabwean. The Refugee Applications Commissioner accepted his Zimbabwean nationality but refused his asylum claim on credibility grounds.
His subsidiary protection application and a later appeal were refused. The International Protection Appeals Tribunal rejected his appeal in February 2018. The Minister then refused a review of the decision on leave to remain, and a deportation order was made in September 2018. The applicant began judicial review proceedings that month. The court granted leave to bring the case; it was not a ruling in his favour on the substance of the challenge.
The applicant’s counsel withdrew the first ground. On the second, the court said the tribunal had not specifically found that the applicant was an MDC supporter: it had found his claim to be one unsurprising, while rejecting his claim to be a high-profile supporter. The judge held that the Minister could rely on or take account of an unsuccessful protection decision when considering refoulement at the deportation stage. The judgment also referred to inconsistencies in the applicant’s account and the tribunal’s finding that parts of his narrative were vague and unspecific.
The third ground concerned a heading in the review decision that listed the applicant’s nationality as South African. The court said the decision elsewhere made clear that he had been presented as South African but accepted as Zimbabwean, and that the review considered his circumstances in Zimbabwe. Even if the heading was an error, the judge said, it arose from confusion caused by the applicant’s own presentation and could not support an order quashing the decision.
The fourth ground challenged the Minister’s statement that there was no new information or material change affecting the applicant’s return, despite new information about the death of the MDC leader. The court described the wording as suboptimal but read it in context as finding that the material did not change the previous assessment of refoulement risk. That conclusion was open to the Minister. On the fifth ground, the applicant had not established that the Minister failed to consider the evidence, including country-of-origin information.
The court dismissed the application. It made no order quashing the deportation decision.