(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . 700 Afghan refugees 'lost' by Home Office could face Windrush-style deportations [1] [] Date: 2024-03 The Home Office has lost track of around 700 Afghans it evacuated to the UK, sparking fears that some could be wrongly deported in a repeat of the Windrush scandal. A newly released report by the former borders and immigration inspector, David Neal, has revealed that “the Home Office does not have a single accurate dataset” of Afghans it has resettled in the UK. The department pledged to improve its data management after the 2018 Windrush scandal, when it emerged that hundreds of Commonwealth migrants had been denied their legal rights – with many wrongly deported – because the Home Office failed to record that they had permission to stay in the UK. People who came to the UK on the government’s Afghan resettlement scheme could now face a similar scenario, according to a report by Neal, who was sacked by the home secretary last week. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now The report warned: “There is significant risk that there may be no record of someone having been relocated to the UK… and later being found to have no permission to remain in the UK.” It adds that Home Office staff fear this could lead to Afghans being wrongly found to have illegally entered the UK. They reportedly told inspectors: “We don’t want it [the impact of immigration policies on the Windrush generation] to happen again”. The new report is one of 13 completed by Neal last year that the Home Office published yesterday. The department held the papers back despite having agreed to publish them within eight weeks. Two more remain unpublished. Neal told The Times that his frustration with the lengthy delays to the publication of his reports “forced” him to instead tell the media about alleged border security failings. The government said this amounted to a breach of his contract and fired him. ‘The hard-to-reach cohort’ The government launched the Afghan resettlement scheme in January 2022 to resettle people at risk of persecution from the Taliban due to their work with or for the UK in Afghanistan. Some 15,000 people, including around 3,000 British citizens, were evacuated from Afghanistan in the two weeks following the Taliban’s takeover of the country in August 2021. Home Office staff told the inspectorate they have had to resort to individually phoning some of these people to ask about their immigration status. On one occasion, the Home Office accidentally granted indefinite permission to remain to a British citizen. Neal’s report also revealed that none of the Home Office’s risk assessments “listed the potential impact of the hard-to-reach cohort becoming subject to enforcement action as a result of poor data and record-keeping”. This was despite senior managers being aware of this risk, it added. Some 12,000 Afghans have been granted leave to remain in the UK under resettlement schemes to date, according to data published by the Home Office yesterday. Neal's report also found that Rishi Sunak’s demands that the Home Office stop using hotels to temporarily house asylum seekers have led to hundreds of at-risk Afghans being left stranded in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Inspectors said the department knew the decision to ‘pause’ rescuing Afghans to avoid paying for their accommodation in the UK was a “secret policy” that could be unlawful, but went ahead anyway because of pressure from the prime minister. The Home Office was criticised for failing to communicate to the Afghans waiting to be brought to the UK that it had paused its resettlement scheme. Inspectors also raised concerns that the Home Office was failing to take steps to bring the most vulnerable Afghans, including women and girls, to the UK. Afghans still trapped in Afghanistan are required to travel to Pakistan to submit biometric data before they can be issued a UK visa. The report said that the requirement made it more difficult for women and girls to be resettled because their movements are restricted by the Taliban. Last year, openDemocracy reported that the Home Office refused a biometric waiver for a former lawyer being hunted by the Taliban for previously prosecuting its members. The Home Office admitted to inspectors that there was “no formal process available to request a biometric waiver.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/home-office-afghan-resettlement-scheme-windrush-david-neal/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/