One retired NHS nurse and teacher spent her life dedicated to helping others, but after the Home Office lost her passport she was trapped in limbo facing statelessness.
Emunah Baht Gavriel came to the country aged 21, in 1979, from Trinidad and Tobago and studied here before she began working as a nurse and psychologist.
Across her time in the country, she worked for four NHS health authorities across London, the south west and the midlands and taught at colleges as well.
Alongside that, the now 68-year-old from Nottinghamshire volunteered at charities but had no clue that after having her passport stolen, she would end up fighting against the Home Office itself for her right to stay in the country, an ordeal that would leave her feeling "powerless".
"I was devastated, I collapsed … my distressing situation was worsened by this institutional racism and incompetence," she told The Mirror.
Tragically across this time Emunah's mother fell ill in 2007 and then died in 2018.
But not once was she able to return to Trinidad and Tobago to visit her ailing mother or even go to her funeral. Five years later she still hasn't been to the land of her birth as she battles for the compensation needed to make the journey back.
In 2004, when lecturing at Bromley College, her passport was stolen from her car after a thief smashed in the window.
Sending away for another one was simple enough, and after a three year wait it eventually arrived, but her stamp granting her indefinite leave was in the stolen passport, meaning she had to get another.
She contacted the Home Office locally and asked if she could come in to hand her passport over, but was told that wasn't doable, and she would have to post it.
Emunah sent it registered mail during mail strikes, and despite the Home Office confirming receipt of it, they then told her they had lost the passport that took her three years to get.
To make matters worse, the college where she worked at the time merged with another, leading to all employees having to reapply and she had to resend her status - but she didn't have it any more.
Emunah said this led to her losing her position at the college, even dropping out a teacher training course and meant she had to apply, again, for a new passport.
It took years, but by 2014, Emunah had her new passport, and asked again if she could come in to hand it in, but once again she was told to mail it in to receive her stamp and once again it was lost.
She said: "It was absolutely awful. As someone trained in psychiatry it was psychologically and socially disorientating, suddenly you feel so insecure, for the most part you are persona non gratis, you can’t verify your status. Prior to that I’d worked for four health authorities … graduated with Open University, I knew I was rightly here.
"I felt powerlessness, it was a loss of sense of my social and legal identity, you don’t realise how important these things are as you need them for jobs."
At this point, Emunah found getting jobs immensely difficult and did volunteering when she was unable to find work.
Then in August 2017, she took redundancy and went to her local job centre to register unemployed and find work when she felt her situation unravelling around her once more.
"The advisor took my details and then began to look confused, she said 'I’m sorry Ms Gavriel we can’t find you on the system, the system is saying you’re not legitimate'," she said.
"The Home Office denied me any access to benefits on the basis they had never had any document of me ever entering the country. They did a statutory test which says I’m illegal in the country because I’ve never been recognised by the system."
She was left stunned by the move and even after she got some of her former employees to send evidence of her work and being in the country so long to the Home Office, she still got nowhere.
With no ability to work, or receive benefits, Emunah relied on her daughter to get by and spent months in uncertainty and fear, not knowing if she would ever get help or be able to work again.
It was during this tough time when she was caring for her granddaughter, that Emunah began outlining a children's book based off her childhood love of mangos.
Then as the Windrush Scandal broke and the Home Office scrambled to right some of its many wrongs, Emunah was lucky enough to be one of those whose situation was about to be put right.
She was contacted and told to come in so she could have her status reinstated.
But even then Emunah was taking no chances, and gathered every single shred of evidence she had proving her right to stay in the country she had given so much too.
"It had every address I’d lived, every place I’d worked, all from Leicester to in Croydon, it had everything about me. As we say in Trinidad and Tobago it had everything including me shimmies and bambam!
"When I showed that document to the Home Office, she was getting dizzy when I began to lay it out," she recalled triumphantly.
Emunah continued: "There were hundreds of us there having our status restored, they treated us like celebrities, they had a hostess team to welcome us, they were all smiles… it was surreal.
"The normal cold face and hostility was gone. It was a kind of mini celebrity guilt tripping, all-smiles, escorting you around."
But one memory stuck out, amongst all the Home Office "flim flam".
"There was a woman there from Jamaica, and she was ballin’ [crying]," she said.
"She broke down carrying all that for all those years, she came here when she was a child on her mother’s or father’s passport, and for her to have her status verified, we just had to hold her up, she wept, she balled, she cried, she prayed, she thanked god, it was so overwhelming," she said.
Emunah is now in the process of battling for a fair compensation for what took place, having been offered a "pittance".
But across this incredibly difficult period for her, Emunah's mother first fell ill, then tragically died and she wasn't able to visit her before she passed, or even go to the funeral.
Even since, Emunah still hasn't been able to return to Trinidad and Tobago to mourn, all because of what happened to her.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “The whole of government remain absolutely committed to righting the wrongs of the Windrush scandal.
“We have paid or offered more than £72 million in compensation to those affected and we continue to make improvements so people receive the maximum award as quickly as possible.
"This includes establishing a review process for those dissatisfied with their compensation offer. However, we know there is more to do, and will work tirelessly to make sure such an injustice is never repeated.”
Emunah has since released her first children's book 'Clever Chrissie and the Mango Stories' and is working on her second.
Her book is available in some London libraries in Croydon and available to buy here.
