The High Court has quashed deportation orders made against a Nigerian woman and her child after finding that the Minister’s assessment of the risk of their return to Nigeria was not adequately explained.
Mr Justice Cooke ruled that the memorandum supporting the orders did not make clear why the Minister concluded that repatriating the woman would not breach the prohibition on refoulement under section 5 of the Refugee Act 1996. The court said the memorandum summarised her account of threats from her Muslim father after she converted to Christianity, then set out country information and concluded that her return would not breach the law, without explaining how that information supported the conclusion.
The woman had claimed that her father forced her to drink a potion that caused a miscarriage, threatened her and sent a man to threaten her. Her asylum claim was refused, that decision was upheld on appeal, and a later application for subsidiary protection was also refused. The Minister made deportation orders on 9 February 2010.
The applicants argued that the reasons for the section 5 decision could not be discerned. The Minister’s side said the file memorandum, read as a whole and against the woman’s representations, made the rationale clear. The judge accepted that the Minister had addressed the relevant legal question, but held that the reasons for the conclusion were not intelligible from the memorandum. A rationale that could be reconstructed during the judicial review hearing was not enough, the court said.
The Minister also asked the court to refuse relief because information received after the deportation decisions raised questions about the mother’s identity and personal history. The information concerned a visa application made in Nigeria by her deported husband, who was identified by fingerprints. In that application, he reportedly gave different details about his wife and said he had three children living in Nigeria. The mother said she had had no contact with him since his deportation and had no knowledge of or responsibility for the claims in his application.
The court said it was unnecessary to decide whether the mother or her husband was telling the full truth. It declined to withhold relief on that basis and quashed the deportation orders because of the flawed section 5 consideration. The Minister must make a new decision on the original proposal to deport and may invite updated representations. The court made no finding on the truth of the disputed accounts.