The Home Office acted unlawfully in trying to deport a British-born man who has never left the country to Portugal, from where his parents arrived more than 30 years ago, a judge has ruled.
Dmitry Lima, 28, who was born in Lambeth, south London, does not speak Portuguese and has never travelled abroad but in 2022 he was given a deportation order by the Home Office after serving a prison sentence for drugs offences and for carrying a Taser.
After a tribunal, Judge O’Garro agreed with Lima’s lawyers that their client was British as he was born in the UK when his mother and late father had been exercising their EU treaty right of free movement to work in the country.
“As I have found the appellant to be a British citizen, I find the decision of the respondent to deport the appellant is not in accordance with the law,” the judge ruled.
The case has drawn claims that the Home Office is wasting taxpayers’ money. Lima’s lawyer, Naga Kandiah, a public law solicitor at MTC solicitors, said that while the tribunal had accepted his arguments, and that an initial appeal request from the government had been denied, “we have to await the final outcome of any challenge to the decision by the Home Office”.
The case is the latest to highlight the tough post-Brexit approach taken to EU migration cases, with the Home Office pursuing the case despite evidence that Lima had never even left the UK, let alone visited Portugal, and it being admitted that he would struggle to integrate into a country where he had no social links and did not speak the language.
Under changes brought in after Brexit, an EU national’s deportation, as with that of any other nationality, is deemed “conducive to the public good and in the public interest” if they have received a prison sentence of more than 12 months.
Previously, EU nationals who had lived in the UK for five years who had been convicted of a crime would have been deported only “on serious grounds of public policy and public security”, with the threshold for those who have been continuously in the country raised to “imperative grounds of public security”.
Lima was further said to have no protections under the EU settled status scheme as he had not made an application for leave to remain before the June 2021 cut-off.
Lima had been convicted on two counts of possession with intent to supply a class A drug and for possession of a prohibited weapon, namely a Taser, in August 2020, for which he was sentenced to four years and six months in prison, of which he served just over two years.
He was served a deportation order in October 2022 after being moved from prison to Brook House immigration removal centre at Gatwick airport.
Lima had no prior convictions and said his father’s death and then falling in with a bad crowd had led him to commit his crimes, which he claimed to regret.
In response to the tribunal’s judgment in Lima’s favour, which cited his mother’s work as a hairdresser in London when he was born, the Home Office had sought leave to appeal.
Home Office lawyers argued that a gap in national insurance contributions by Lima’s mother between 1997 and 2003 meant she had lost her “worker” status. The judge ruled it “did not deprive her of her worker status at the time of the appellant’s birth” in 1995, and rejected the appeal application.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Mr Lima failed to provide any material evidence to resist his removal.
“As part of his appeal, he submitted significant evidence to support his contention in relation to an entitlement to British nationality. His case was then reviewed and his nationality accepted.”
