Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what procedures are in place to ensure that illegal migrants to the UK are returned to their country of origin; and whether people deemed by her Department to be illegal migrants are only able to appeal that decision from their country of origin.

The Home Office continues to take action at every opportunity to prevent immigration abuse, pursue immigration offenders and increase compliance with immigration law including arresting and returning illegal migrants to their country of origin. The Immigration Act 2014 simplified the appeals system so that an appeal right only arises where a claim raising fundamental rights is refused, namely asylum, humanitarian protection and human rights claims. The Home Office has the power to require an appeal to be brought only once an individual has left the UK where the claim is clearly unfounded and where a person liable to deportation makes a human rights claim and it would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights to require them to appeal from overseas.

The Immigration Bill seeks to extend the power to require an appeal to be brought from overseas to all human rights claims where an appeal from overseas would not cause serious irreversible harm or otherwise breach human rights. Similar provisions are set out in the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 which apply to EEA nationals and their family members.