Homeless newborn as Home Office rushes to clear asylum backlog | Immigration and asylum

A father with a newborn baby and a mother with two children are among asylum seekers made homeless by the Home Office after wrongly withdrawing their applications, it has emerged.

Families were ordered to leave their homes and had their financial support withdrawn because they failed to show up for interviews for which they had not received invitations due to errors by the Interior Ministry itself.

The ministry was ordered to review the cases after the asylum seekers won a legal appeal at the lower court, alongside two men from Iraq and Sudan, while 13 similar cases have yet to be heard.

The claimants are among more than 14,000 asylum seekers whose applications have been withdrawn without consent during a frantic campaign to meet Rishi Sunak’s pledge to clear the “legacy backlog” by the end of 2023.

Data obtained by the Observer Under freedom of information laws, the “constructive withdrawal” process, which removes the right to remain in the UK or receive housing and financial support, was used for one in six decisions made under this campaign – a dramatic increase on previous years.

The court’s judge, Sehba Haroon Storey, said people should not be “deprived of protection through no fault of their own” and that particular caution should be exercised towards vulnerable people and children.

Referring to the mother in the case, a 39-year-old Indian woman, the judge said: “She is a single mother of two children but the Home Office failed to take this into account when it decided to treat her asylum application as withdrawn and order her to vacate her accommodation with immediate effect.”

The court heard that even though the woman was living at her authorised address, all letters relating to her asylum interview were returned to the Home Office as undelivered by Royal Mail, and her application was deleted from the system even after she informed the authorities that they had not been received.

In another case, a 40-year-old asylum seeker from Hong Kong temporarily moved out of his accommodation when his partner was due to give birth to their son, and was only sent his interview invitation when he returned after the due date had passed. The court heard that he was told his asylum application had been withdrawn at the same time and ordered to leave the accommodation, despite being responsible for a baby who was then six weeks old.

Storey said: “He and his son are currently receiving temporary accommodation and support from friends. They are destitute.”

Under Home Office policy, constructive removal can be triggered for people found to be “non-compliant” with the asylum process, for reasons such as failing to attend interviews or return questionnaires, or leaving official accommodation. But lawyers and charities say a significant number of decisions are unlawful because the Home Office has sent communications to the wrong addresses.

Katie Nelson, of Duncan Lewis Solicitors, said: “We have represented dozens of people who have been left on the brink of destitution, due to being evicted from their host accommodation, on the grounds that they are no longer ‘asylum seekers’ because their application has been withdrawn. For many of them, this is the first time they have heard of the decision to implicitly withdraw their application due to errors in the Home Office’s systems. [on] addresses and contact details.

“Many of them have minor dependents, are victims of trafficking or torture and must navigate the system to assert their residency rights, while trying to avoid ending up homeless on the streets.”

Nelson said the official eviction letters wrongly state that there is no right to appeal, even though the trial court has heard many cases, meaning many people may not have tried to challenge the decisions.

Care4Calais said it had referred more than 30 people to lawyers after losing their housing and financial support because their applications were withdrawn. Hannah Marwood, the charity’s head of legal access, described the situation as a “total disaster” and said many asylum seekers only realised their applications had been cancelled after they were deported. “They get a letter saying, ‘You have to leave in seven days’ and then you have to try to understand what has happened,” she added. “We have cases where people are left homeless.”

The most common reasons for implicit withdrawal include failing to complete asylum questionnaires, but Marwood said beneficiaries were often unable to understand or complete forms written only in English.

Another common reason is failure to show up for interviews, but Marwood said: “A lot of them either didn’t get the invitation or sent it to the wrong address.” Others had been classified as “fugitives” even though they were living in official accommodation.

“The Home Office does not appear to have the systems in place to know where someone is,” she added.

The Home Office said: “We are carefully considering the court’s findings and will respond in due course.”