Upper Tribunal (Immigration and asylum chamber), 2018-09-07, JR/01619/2018
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Date | 07 September 2018 |
| Published date | 27 July 2020 |
| Hearing Date | 27 July 2018 |
| Status | Unreported |
| Court | Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) |
| Appeal Number | JR/01619/2018 |
Approved Judgment of Upper Tribunal Judge Gleeson Case Number: JR/1619/2018
IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: JR/1619/2018
Field House,
Breams Buildings
London
EC4A 1WR
25-26 June 2018 and 27 July 2018
Before
UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE GLEESON
Between
JMB and RAA
[ANONYMITY ORDER MADE]
Applicants
and
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent
‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑
Ms Charlotte Kilroy and Ms Michelle Knorr, Counsel, instructed by Bhatt Murphy Solicitors, appeared on behalf of the Applicant.
Mr Robert Kellar instructed by the Government Legal Department appeared on behalf of the Respondent.
APPROVED JUDGMENT
Anonymity Order
Pursuant to Rule 14(1) of the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008, I order that unless the Upper Tribunal or a Court directs otherwise, no report of these proceedings or any form of publication thereof shall disclose or identify any document, information or matter likely to lead members of the public to identify the applicants or either of them. This order applies to, amongst others, all parties. Any failure to comply with this order could give rise to contempt of court proceedings.
JUDGE GLEESON: The applicants, a 17 year old Eritrean man and his aunt, a British citizen of Eritrean origin, have been granted permission to seek judicial review of the respondent’s ongoing failure to make a lawful decision and/or admit the applicant to the United Kingdom in accordance with his rights under the Dublin III Regulation and/or Article 8 ECHR and/or the respondent’s policy.
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The principal applicant is referred in the application for judicial review throughout as the applicant. No remedy is sought on behalf of the second applicant, either in the grounds for review or the application form itself. For clarity, in this judgment I refer to the principal applicant as such, and to the second applicant as ‘the aunt’ or ‘his aunt’.
Background
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The following account emerges from the documents before me. There is no direct record of the principal applicant’s account. What the Tribunal has is a proof of evidence recorded in witness statements from Hamish Arnott, his solicitor (there is no evidence that the principal applicant has approved it or read it in his own language); the history he gave to Helen Cusack O’Keeffe, an independent social worker, recorded in her report; and the French age assessor’s interview record.
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These documents show that the principal applicant, a young man from Eritrea, has consistently told the French authorities and his solicitor that he was orphaned very young and brought up by his grandmother, along with his younger brother, who is still in Eritrea. He has had about 5 years’ schooling and can write Tigrinya, but speaks hardly any English or French. In 2015, the principal applicant left Eritrea and travelled up through Africa, across the Sahara, and across the Mediterranean, reaching Europe by way of Italy, then travelling on to France and the Calais camps, where he set about trying to reach his aunt in the United Kingdom.
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The most direct account we have of the principal applicant’s reasons for his journey was given in the French age assessment interview on 21 March 2017, when the applicant said he left Eritrea to avoid military service and that he had always intended to join his aunt (a British citizen of Eritrean origin) in the United Kingdom. The aunt had supported him and his brother by sending money to his grandmother, after her half-brother (the principal applicant’s father) and his mother had both died. The applicant produced a medical card from Eritrea with a birth date of 14 September 2000 which would make him almost 18 years old now.
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In October 2016, the French authorities forcibly closed the Calais camps, and all those who appeared to be unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were taken into care and looked after at special reception and orientation centres for unaccompanied minors across France (Centre d’Accueil et d’Orientation pour Mineurs Isolés, hereafter ‘CAOMI’). The principal applicant was placed in a CAOMI in Grambois, near Aix en Provence in southeast France.
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The United Kingdom authorities sent teams of caseworkers and interpreters to the CAOMIs, to identify children with relatives in the United Kingdom for possible admission. This expedited process resulted in very brief decisions, communicated by the United Kingdom authorities to the French authorities in the form of a spreadsheet, and by the French authorities to the children, orally. The children who were not admitted became disappointed, upset and unruly in the CAOMIs: many of them left the CAOMIs and headed back to Calais to try crossing to the United Kingdom again.
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A second consideration of those who were not admitted under the expedited process (the filtration process) took place at the insistence of the French authorities, between January and March 2017, when the filtration process closed. In total, approximately 800 children were admitted to the United Kingdom to join relatives here and make their claims in the United Kingdom. The principal applicant was not among them.
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No reasoned decision was provided to the principal applicant for either of those decisions. There is no witness statement from the respondent’s caseworker who interviewed the principal applicant at the reception centre in Grambois, nor from the caseworker who made the decisions at the United Kingdom end to refuse him admission under the expedited process and/or the filtration process for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children.
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There is a statement from Andrew Jones, a senior caseworker and the Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children Lead at the European Intake Unit (EIU), created in June 2016. The EIU deals with requests for the United Kingdom to accept responsibility for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children transferring from a participating European Union Member State or associated country. Mr Jones joined the unit in July 2016 and was deployed to France between 10 October 2016 and 25 November 2016 for Operation Purnia, the expedited process, interviewing first in the Calais camp, then as part of the mobile interview teams in the CAOMIs. He did not interview this applicant: the caseworker who did has left the respondent’s employment.
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Once back in the United Kingdom, Mr Jones reviewed and checked caseworker decisions made under the expedited process and helped the caseworker tasked with examining the principal applicant’s case to search GCID for the aunt’s details. Mr Jones approved the decision that the principal applicant did not qualify under the expedited process. His evidence is that the United Kingdom caseworker has no memory of any details about the principal applicant’s case.
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Between October 2016 and March 2017, the applicant was treated as a child by both the French and United Kingdom authorities. Ms Julia Farman’s statement of 1 June 2018 says that to her knowledge, the aunt’s written confirmation that she would be willing for the applicant to join her, and her copy passport, never reached the United Kingdom authorities, though she recognised that the existence of these documents appeared on a spreadsheet prepared by Cameron Bryson (from whom we have no witness statement):
“12. On 6 February 2017, documents from the first filter list were provided to United Kingdom officials by the French officials, via our United Kingdom French liaison officer Cameron Bryson. Cameron also produced his own internal spreadsheet on 10 February 2018, setting out where we were with documents. … I acknowledge this spreadsheet refers to a passport and letter. the spreadsheet reflected what the French authorities told us would be provided, rather than what actually was provided, and copies of the passport for [the principal applicant] were never provided.”
The date of 10 February 2018 in Ms Farman’s witness statement must, in context, refer to 10 February 2017.
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Mr Bryson’s spreadsheet says under the heading, Review of case details – initial that ‘Address and contact number now provided’; and under Additional Documentation ‘passport and sponsor letter’. The aunt’s witness statement shows that she did produce both those documents to the French authorities when requested. I note that there is no witness statement or contemporaneous note from Mr Bryson about what happened.
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At [13] in her June 2018 statement, Ms Farman confirmed that on 8 March 2017, a complete list of overall responses was sent to French officials, reaffirming the respondent’s position of 27 January 2017 in respect of the principal applicant:
“…for this case to progress towards a take charge request under Dublin III if the child engaged with the French asylum process. This can be found on the second tab labelled ‘French Filter List One and he is at line 110. This again confirms that there was merit in pursuing a take charge request, and also that we had received no documents in relation to the case.”
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After the respondent’s decision in the expedited process was communicated to him orally by the French authorities, the principal applicant left the Grambois CAOMI. He made his way north-west across France, via Paris, back in the direction of Calais. In Paris, he lived rough for...
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