The High Court has refused an applicant leave to challenge a deportation order, finding no substantial grounds for his arguments that the process was unfair or that his private and family rights had not been adequately considered.
In a judgment delivered on 14 November 2016, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys dismissed the application for leave to apply for judicial review. He assumed, without deciding, that the time limit for bringing the challenge could be extended.
The applicant, Tyreed Onifade, arrived in Ireland from Nigeria via the UK in April 2014. The judgment says he entered clandestinely from Belfast without permission. He married an Irish citizen in December 2014.
An application for permission to remain, based on the marriage, was refused in January 2016. The refusal referred to a damaged Nigerian passport, the wife’s income and the applicant’s entry and continued presence without permission. An appeal was rejected in April 2016.
The applicant received a proposal to deport letter in May 2016. The judgment says no response appears to have been sent. After new solicitors took over in July, they told the Minister for Justice and Equality they had requested the previous solicitors’ file and understood that the permission application had been reopened. The Minister’s office replied that no permission application was pending. The new solicitors did not make submissions under section 3 of the Immigration Act 1999 before the deportation order was made on 15 August 2016.
The applicant argued that making the order before his new solicitors obtained the file was unfair. The judge said the applicant had already been given 15 working days to respond to the proposal to deport and that, once that period had passed, his solicitors needed to act urgently. They could have made at least interim representations without the file, the judgment said. The court found no substantial grounds on this argument.
The applicant also argued that the Minister had failed to consider, or adequately consider, his rights under Article 41 of the Constitution and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The judge said that, in the absence of submissions responding to the deportation proposal, the applicant could not complain on that basis. He also found no substantial grounds to argue that a “compelling justification” was required to deport him, given that he had never been lawfully in the State.
The court dismissed the application for leave. It directed that the matter be listed if an application for leave to appeal is made, which must be on notice to the respondent. The applicant was ordered to serve the Chief State Solicitor’s Office with the judgment within seven days. The court also directed that any interim injunction still in force would be discharged. The judgment says an earlier interim injunction appeared to have expired on 10 October 2016.