The High Court quashed part of a decision refusing to revoke a deportation order for an anonymised Congolese applicant, directing the Minister for Justice and Equality to assess the risk she might face if questioned about how she left the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The court did not reopen the other assessments in the decision.
The applicant, identified in the judgment as P. B. N., had claimed asylum in Ireland in 2007. Her account of persecution, based on work as a secretary to a Congolese military officer, had been rejected on credibility grounds by the asylum authorities. She did not challenge those findings. The Minister later refused her subsidiary protection and leave to remain, and made a deportation order in September 2011. She did not challenge that order at the time.
In 2012, the applicant asked to re-enter the asylum process and separately sought revocation of the deportation order. Both applications relied substantially on a report about returned Congolese asylum seekers, known as the Ramos report. The Minister refused re-entry following a review in November 2012. The applicant sought judicial review of that refusal and of the later decision declining to revoke the deportation order.
On the re-entry challenge, the court found that the review decision did not clearly show that the Ramos report had been assessed, as required when deciding whether new material significantly added to the likelihood of refugee status. However, the court refused to quash that decision. In reviewing the separate revocation decision, it had found the report unreliable as country-of-origin information, and concluded that it did not meet the minimum materiality threshold for granting judicial review in this case.
The court upheld the Minister’s assessment that being a failed asylum seeker, by itself, did not put the applicant at risk of serious harm on return. It also rejected her challenge based on alleged bias. But the court found a specific omission in the revocation decision: it had not assessed whether the applicant might be questioned about leaving the DRC using a false passport, whether that could lead to detention or another sanction, or whether any resulting treatment could breach protections against refoulement or inhuman or degrading treatment. Her earlier claim to have travelled on a Belgian passport with another person’s photograph had been disbelieved by the asylum tribunal, but the court said the issue still required an assessment in light of the available country information.
The court quashed the revocation decision only to that extent and remitted the matter for a supplemental decision on that discrete risk. The Minister was not required to reopen the decision’s other considerations.