A Pakistani asylum seeker who claimed she was “treated like a criminal” during her overstay in the UK was granted over £100,000 in compensation.
Declaring that she would be persecuted if compelled to return home on religious grounds, Nadra Almas began a judicial struggle against the Home Office to stay in the UK.
Ms Almas, who first entered the country in 2004 on a student visa, claimed that if she were sent back to Pakistan, her Christian beliefs would expose her to abuse.
She was held by Home Office authorities in 2018 and told she would be deported, the court heard. However, two weeks later, she was freed. She could not travel, work, or get any benefits during the nearly three years it took the government to grant her refugee status.
The court heard that Ms Almas remained in the UK in 2004 even though her student visa had expired five months after her arrival. In February 2008, she received a notice of removal. She submitted six applications to remain in the UK between 2005 and 2014, the court was also informed.
For the same reasons that Ms Almas had applied for, her son, who was 26 at the time, was given refugee status in 2018.
‘Catfished’ by a 19-year-old Pakistani male, the 32-year-old American woman demands $100k Now watching in 8.2K ‘Numerous violations’ were discovered by the court in the manner in which Ms Almas was held at the Yarl’s Wood centre.
The court was told that Ms Almas was “handcuffed and detained, imprisoned in a room with two men she did not know and told she was going to be flown back to Pakistan” after being detained by Home Office personnel in 2018 and told she would be deported.
The court discovered ‘many breaches’ in the Yarl’s Wood centre’s detention of Ms Almas, including the failure to conduct the required analysis of alternatives to being held there.
She was later released with severe limitations, such as the need that she reside at a designated address and that she not be allowed to work or operate a business. Before her refugee status was granted, the restrictions were in effect for two years and nine months.
She later received £98,757.04 in compensation, arguing that the conditions violated her human rights.
When the government appealed the ruling of Recorder McNeill, the case’s initial judge, who determined that the delay in granting refugee status violated Ms Almas’s Human Rights Act right to family life, the case made its way to the Birmingham High Court.
Recorder McNeill stated in her decision that the delay demonstrated a “reckless disregard for her rights.”
The judge said: ‘She could not travel, she could not move freely, she could not develop her private and family life because her status was uncertain, and she could not work or claim public funds and had to rely on the little support from the asylum system,’
‘The rights at stake were the most basic rights of liberty of the individual. [Ms. Almas] feared to return to Pakistan for reasons of her religion and personal safety, which she clearly expressed to [the Home Office] on being detained, and was, indeed, in due course, granted refugee status, thus vindicating the genuineness of her fears.’
The ‘breaches were neither small nor minor,’ according to Mr Justice Ritchie, who rejected the government’s appeal. “The damages awarded were appropriate,” he continued.