Home Office accused of accepting Rwanda’s promises on UK asylum plan without scrutiny

The Home Office ignored serious problems with the UK’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda and failed to scrutinise assurances made by the east-African country, the Supreme Court has heard.

The government is challenging a Court of Appeal ruling from June that the multimillion-pound deal, which would see migrants deported to Rwanda and have their asylum cases processed there, was unlawful.

Raza Husain KC, who represents a number of asylum seekers, told the UK’s highest court on Tuesday that the Home Office had failed to acknowledge problems with the Rwandan asylum system and had ignored the country’s history of abuse of asylum seekers when considering whether it was a safe country to send migrants.

Sir James Eadie KC, representing the Home Office, told the court on Monday that Rwanda’s promises to the UK marked “a break with what has occurred in the past”.

But Mr Husain referenced an open letter from Human Rights Watch that said the charity was “deeply concerned that asylum seekers will be at risk of abuse if they speak up about their conditions in Rwanda or could be forced to self-censor”.

The Home Office has argued that asylum seekers can use their internet-connected phones to express concerns about their treatment to family members or lawyers and said a UK monitoring committee would review 10 per cent of the formal complaints made.

But Mr Husain said refugees in Rwanda had been intimidated in the past by government officials.

He told the court: “Senior government of Rwanda officials in 2015 warned refugees not to report attempts to recruit them in military operations ... and were told to ‘go back to those NGOs and change statements’”.

He continued: “Rwanda is a surveillance state. There is a former economic adviser to the president who said in July 2021 that the entire country is a spying machine.”

He referenced the fatal shooting of 12 refugees by police in western Rwanda in 2018, where police fired live ammunition at refugees who were protesting outside a UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) office.

Mr Husain also argued that the asylum seekers wouldn’t have access to a functioning appeal system if their claims were rejected in Rwanda. In one asylum claim refusal letter seen by the UNHCR, Rwandan officials did not explain why the claim was rejected, simply writing: “Refugee status wasn’t granted because you do not meet the eligibility criteria and the reasons given in your interview were not pertinent,” the court heard.

The Rwandan court system is not independent of the government, Mr Husain argued, and there are not enough lawyers to deal with any challenges to decisions.

Mr Husain also referenced a prior agreement that Rwanda had entered into with Israel, which saw around 4,000 people deported by Israel.

A report by the International Refugee Rights Initiative found that the majority of the migrants brought to Rwanda under the deal were “smuggled out of the country by land to Kampala [in Uganda] within days of arriving in Kigali”.

The report said: “They are not given an opportunity to apply for asylum, and even if they wish to stay in Rwanda, their refugee claims cannot be assessed.”

The Home Office has argued that Rwanda’s past failure to uphold its agreement with Israel was “irrelevant” because the deal with the UK is very different.

Mr Husain said: “The secretary of state in her written case says that it appears in various respects that it was different. What she doesn’t say is that the abuse didn’t occur.”

He argued: “Rwanda’s breach of an earlier assurance, even with a state other than the UK, is obviously relevant ... How could it possibly not be.”

Mr Husain also argued that there was a real risk of asylum seekers being forcibly returned to the countries they came from. The UNHCR has provided a number of examples where Syrian and Afghan refugees have been sent back to their home countries via Turkey and Dubai.

Mr Husain also said the UK government’s monitoring committee, set up to scrutinise Rwanda’s treatment of asylum seekers, “lacks teeth and lacks efficacy”.

His comments were supported by representatives of the UNHCR who told the court they were very concerned about the involvement of a Rwandan government department, DGIE, in asylum processing.

Laura Dubinsky KC, for UNHCR, said the DGIE was part of Rwanda’s security service and had repeatedly and recently intervened in asylum applications. “The DGIE is deeply embedded in the official decision making system,” she added.

Ms Dubinsky expressed concerns that the secretary of state had allowed the agency, which she said has a history of “very serious breaches” of Rwandan law, into “the heart” of the asylum agreement between the UK and Rwanda.

The hearing before Lords Reed, Hodge, Lloyd-Jones, Briggs and Sales is expected to end on Wednesday, with a judgment expected in a few months’ time.