R Mahajna v Secretary of State for the Home Department
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Garnham |
| Judgment Date | 19 June 2017 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [2017] EWHC J0619-1 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Docket Number | JR/8934/2016 |
| Date | 19 June 2017 |
[2017] EWHC J0619-1
UPPER TRIBUNAL IMMIGRATION and ASYLUM CHAMBER
In Birmingham
Priory Courts
33 Bull Street
Birmingham
West Midlands
B4 6DS
Mr Justice Garnham
JR/8934/2016
The Claimant appeared in Person
Mr T Sadiq (instructed by Government Legal Department) appeared on behalf of the Defendant
The applicant, Mr Mahajna, applies with the leave of His Honour Judge Purle, for judicial review of a decision of the Secretary of State to the Home Department, dated 5th August 2016, upholding a refusal of leave to enter the UK on 8th June 2016 as a visitor.
The applicant had sought that leave to enter at Luton Airport. He says he was returning to the UK to pursue a civil claim he had brought against the University of East London where he had been a student for much of the previous decade.
It is now more than a year since leave to enter was refused. The claimant says that his civil claim has a trial window which runs for 6 months from 31st July 2017 and he says he should have been permitted to remain here as a visitor throughout that period leading up to that trial.
Case Management
Before turning to the merits of this case and the history of Mr Mahajna's immigration proceedings I need to express some concern about case management arrangements in this case.
In granting permission for this judicial review, Judge Purle gave directions including requiring the claimant to produce a comprehensive hearing bundle indexed and paginated, a skeleton argument and a bound bundle of authorities. All of those, the judge directed, should be produced to the court no later than 21 days before the hearing. Mr Mahajna failed to comply with those directions. In particular, he failed to produce a comprehensive hearing bundle, properly indexed and paginated. Instead I was provided with an enormous quantity of loose documentation. That contained, among much else, a number of bundles entitled SW4, SW5, SW6 and SW7. Those were not properly paginated or indexed and were not put in a sensible, usable form for this hearing. I was also not provided with a proper skeleton argument although the applicant directed me to the opening pages of one of those bundles which he said served as a skeleton argument. I was not provided with a bundle of authorities of any sort.
In granting permission His Honour Judge Purle indicated that a failure to comply with those case management directions might result in this application being struck out. I gave serious consideration to making such a striking out order. However, the applicant is a litigant in person. I had only one case in my list today and I felt able to indulge the applicant by continuing to hear the application despite the disordered state of the documentation. I have to observe however that disordered state did result in difficulties for both the court and the advocates in navigating our way through the morass of paper. Significant delay was cuased. Be that as it may, with the help of Mr Mahajna himself and that of Mr Sadiq, counsel for the Home Office, we have managed to make the application work reasonably satisfactorily.
The History
The claimant summarises his immigration history as follows (although I say parenthetically that the detail of this summary is not agreed by the Secretary of State). The applicant asserts that he first came to the United Kingdom in 2001. He entered on a visa for English language students and he remained until 2003. Between 2003 and 2004, he says he was at a university in Malta. In 2004 he came to the United Kingdom again, where he remained until 2009, again on a student visa. He says that he continued to live in the UK from 2012, with the benefit of a student visa. He says that in 2012 a further application for a student visa was refused but he appealed and that appeal was allowed.
In 2014, he says, he applied for a visa on human rights grounds. That was initially allowed but there was an application to strike out that appeal, which succeeded. In any event, towards the end of 2014, the applicant left the UK and travelled to Israel. From there, in February 2015, he applied for a visa to come to the United Kingdom in order to prepare for the hearing of his civil claim, in his case against his old university. That visa was refused. He appealed with permission from Lang J. However as I understand the position, the relevant fees were not paid and that appeal was struck out.
Nonetheless, in June 2016, the appellant travelled to the UK and arrived at Luton Airport. It was there that he applied for a visa from the immigration officers at the airport, explaining that he was visiting this country in order to attend a hearing at the court in a case against the university. That visa was refused. The applicant was held in administrative detention. He then made an application for bail. That application was successful later in June 2016, but by then the hearing which was the apparent purpose for his visit had already taken place. Nonetheless, there were further hearings anticipated in the civil proceedings and the applicant continued to live in the United Kingdom.
By their letter of 5th August 2016 those acting on behalf of the Secretary of State upheld the decision of the immigration officer at Luton Airport, refusing leave to enter. That is the decision under challenge.
The Decision
It is necessary to refer at a little length to the terms of the Decision Letter in this case. It is, as I have said, dated 5th August 2016 and comes from a member of Immigration Enforcement, a Home Office department. The letter makes it clear that correspondence addressed to the Chief Immigration Officer had been passed to the office for consideration and response.
The letter indicates that the applicant had informed the Home Office that he was required to attend in person the hearing of his civil claim on 14th June 2016, and that the decision of 8th June to refuse him leave to enter as a visitor was in breach of his right to a fair trial. The Home Office letter sets out what is contained in the Home Office records. That includes that the applicant's application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK have been refused on 27th January 2014 with no right of appeal. His application for entry clearance was refused in February 2015 and his appeal against that decision was dismissed on 2nd February 2016. The entry clearance officer, it was said, had not been satisfied that he was genuinely seeking entry to the UK for 1 month as stated and was not satisfied that he was a genuine visitor who would return to Israel at the end of that period.
The Immigration Judge who determined the appeal found that the ECO was both entitled to take the decision to refuse the application and was justified in doing so. The letter goes on to explain that the applicant then sought entry to the UK on 8th June 2016 as a visitor for 7 weeks. It is said that he was refused leave to enter because he failed to satisfy the immigration officer that he was genuinely seeking entry for the limited period stated. It is noted that the applicant had asserted that he needed to be in the UK for 7 weeks in order to comply with any court order made, but...
To continue reading
Request your trial