The High Court has refused an application to release a Nigerian man detained at Cloverhill Prison after a deportation flight bound for Lagos returned to Dublin because it could not enter Algerian airspace.
In a judgment delivered on 4 August 2011, Mr Justice Michael Peart ruled that the man’s renewed detention was lawful. The flight had left Irish airspace, but returned to Dublin Airport at 3.10am on 14 July. The judge accepted that the return was involuntary and beyond the man’s control.
The man had been refused refugee status, and a deportation order was signed on 25 May 2011. A notice sent to him on 1 June required him to leave by 18 June and report to the Garda National Immigration Bureau on 21 June. The judgment said it was unknown whether he received the letter. He did not attend on 21 June, but went to the bureau voluntarily on 4 July and was asked to return the next day. His solicitor later said he did not attend because he was ill; medical certificates recorded that he was unfit for work from 5 to 8 July.
A Garda officer testified that the man was arrested on 12 July on suspicion that he had failed to comply with the notice and intended to avoid removal. He was detained at Cloverhill and placed on the deportation flight the following night. After the flight returned, he was arrested again and taken back to prison under a new detention notification citing the same two grounds.
For the applicant, counsel argued that the original notice had been acted on and was spent once he had left the State. Counsel also argued that a new notice should have been issued after his involuntary return, and that the second detention notification should have stated how much of the maximum eight-week detention period had already elapsed. The State argued that the Garda officer could rely on the earlier events and that the Governor could check the prison’s custody records.
The judge agreed that the original notice was spent and could not, by itself, justify the renewed detention. But he found the Garda officer had reasonable cause to believe the man still intended to avoid removal, based on his missed reporting dates, the address given to immigration officials and his being found at a different address that had not been notified. The judge said that one valid statutory ground was sufficient even though the detention notification also cited the spent notice.
He also held that the notification was not defective for omitting the earlier detention period. The eight-week limit applied to the detention period after the man’s return. The court refused the application for release.