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The long read

The lawyer who takes the cases no onewantsIt has never been easy to win as an immigration lawyer – but now the government is trying to makeit impossible

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Thursday 14 April 2016 06.00 BST

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Two or three times a month, Tom Giles says goodbye to his wife and threechildren at their home in Abingdon, and drives north, through Oxfordshire,to Campsfield House immigration detention centre. This is Tory heartland —rich fields, manicured villages, 4x4s. Campsfield sits at the end of a longcountry lane, opposite Oxford airport’s private jets and training planes. Onthe constituency map it is perched at the end of a Tory promontory: David

Cameron’s Witney constituency flows down one side, Boris Johnson’s former fiefdom ofHenley down the other.

It is nearly 9am by the time Giles, a slight man with a gap between his teeth and a bright-eyed, youthful energy, presents himself at security. He places everything but a notebookand a pen in a locker, then is led through a series of locked doors to a small high-windowed room along a corridor lined with similarly small high-windowed rooms. Hesits down at a desk, checks the handsets in front of him, finds a blank page in hisnotebook, and waits for his first client.

Over the next five hours, Giles sees a series of detainees for up to 30 minutes each. Themen often wear standard-issue blue tracksuits and flip-flops because they wereapprehended in the street and served with deportation orders, or taken from their homesat dawn and not allowed to pack their clothes, or arrived at a port with nothing. Some ofthem came to the UK to study and overstayed, others have lived and worked here foryears. Others, exhausted after arduous journeys from Syria, Eritrea, Somalia,Afghanistan, Libya or Iraq, have been here for a few days.

Giles’s job, as a legal aid immigration solicitor, is to work out if a person has a legal rightto stay in the UK, and if so, to try his hardest to make that possible – in a legalenvironment that is becoming more hostile by the day. As each prisoner explains hiscircumstances, Giles listens, asks questions. Often he has to pick up one of the handsets,gesturing to the man before him to do the same, and they speak through an interpreter.Giles says he will do what he can, he will do his best. Increasingly, he has to say that he issorry, there is nothing he can do.

“It’s just sad,” Giles said after one of these sessions. “Very sad. On a human,compassionate level we can all see why he should be allowed to stay. But there’s alsowhat’s legally possible, and the two are not the same.”

Spending time with Giles makes it clear that the space for what is “legally possible” hasbeen aggressively and deliberately narrowed through a series of decisions all butinvisible to most British citizens.

When MPs voted, last October, to give the immigration bill 2015-16, currently goingthrough parliament, a second reading, Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democratspokesman, protested that there had already been seven immigration bills in the lasteight years and 45,000 changes to the immigration rules since Theresa May becamehome secretary in 2010. Specialist lawyers such as Giles, who argue that even they canbarely keep up, also point to the fact that in 2013, the coalition government cut the legalaid budget by hundreds of millions of pounds. At the same time it limited availability offinancial help for immigration cases to judicial reviews, persons seeking asylum, victimsof domestic violence or trafficking, and those in immigration detention centres seekingbail. This means that anyone applying to remain in this country, on any basis apart from

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/19/fire-campsfield-house-immigration-removal-centre

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/apr/01/legal-aid-cuts



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asylum or domestic violence – be it length of residency, a job offer, investment, marriageor family – must be able to afford a lawyer (and the rapidly increasing visa applicationfees) or navigate a near-impenetrable system unaided.

Since the Immigration Act 1971 came into force, any migrant caught without the correctpapers has been subject to removal from the UK. However, to those for whom it ispolitically expedient to be seen to be tough on foreigners, this is apparently not enough.The 2015-16 bill, the first since the Tories achieved their majority, received its thirdreading in the House of Lords on 12 April. The bill is striking for the range and ingenuityof its criminalisation of those who fall foul of the ever-shifting rules: working illegally orhiring illegal workers; renting accommodation while illegal or renting accommodation tosomeone who might be illegal; driving or having a bank account while illegal – all wouldcarry the possibility of substantial fines or even prison sentences. The governmentwould be given the power to seize the earnings of illegal workers under the Proceeds ofCrime Act 2002. The bill would allow immigration officers to search homes and peopleand to seize payslips, timesheets and nationality documents. It would also allow policeofficers who stop vehicles to check immigration status, and proposes that employerswho want to hire non-European migrants would have to pay an “immigration skillscharge” to do so. More than one observer – Doreen Lawrence among them – has pointedout that some of the powers in the immigration bill, specifically right-to-rent and theright to ask motorists for immigration papers, are effectively permission to discriminateon the basis of colour.

In this already difficult arena, Giles specialises in defending some of the most difficultand unpopular cases of all: those subject to deportation, and foreign nationalsimprisoned in British jails. And he is very good at it. Partly because he will take up casesothers will not, and keeps fighting them even when repeatedly knocked back, asignificant number of Giles’s cases have gone up to the highest courts in the country andentered the law books as having proved important points of principle, about rights ofappeal, for instance, or who should, under the new dispensation, be allowed legal aid.

In a few months’ time Giles will go to the supreme court with a case that tests one of themost sweeping measures in the new bill: “deport first, appeal later”, which allows thegovernment to deport people even if they are in the middle of a legal appeal. It iscurrently applied only to prisoners in the criminal justice system who also happen to beforeign (they may well be legally here), and since July 2014, have automatically beendeported at the end of their sentences. The new bill reiterates a Tory manifesto pledge,that “deport first, appeal later” should extend much further and apply to all migrants,except for refugees.

Because this proposal was in the Tory manifesto it is not subject to amendment in theCommons or the Lords. The only way to fight it is in the courts, which means that ifGiles’s supreme court challenge is successful, the consequences would reach throughoutthe immigration system.



Giles is a partner at Turpin Miller, a legal aid firm in east Oxford. When wemet at his office last summer, there was a heatwave and on the top floor itwas hot – overwhelmingly, enervatingly hot. Open windows and fans madelittle difference. Already scrappy pot plants struggled not to collapsealtogether. Giles sat among files – files on the floor, files in cardboard boxes,files in cabinets lining the walls. “It’s a fight with paper!” he said. “I

actually did tidy up in your honour.”

Most of the files were opened after he met detainees at Campsfield, or after calls directlyto the office, or, quite often, after meeting prisoners at HMP Huntercombe, a prison thathouses only foreign offenders. Giles often gets the feeling no one comes to see themother than the Home Office. On visit after visit he sees how bravado battles withvulnerability, extreme tension with politeness, self-harm with hours in the gym. “Anumber of my clients have been or are on suicide watch. In my experience the numbershave increased,” Giles said.

In the past, he used to explain human rights appeals to clients as a set of scales, with theoffence on one side and everything else – family and private life, length of residency,legal status, good behaviour – weighed up on the other. “But the scales just don’t existanymore. Now there’s only one outcome: not just a decision to deport, but a pursuit ofthat to the bitter end.”

Sitting opposite Giles was Jo Renshaw, also a partner in the firm, and head ofimmigration. As they worked, periods of silent form-filling and email-writing werepunctuated by ringing mobiles, quickfire questions: “Does he live with his family?”;“How much do you have in your bank account?”; “Do they need the pregnancy scan?”.Little remains private, once the Home Office gets involved.

As Giles and Renshaw busied themselves, a paralegal entered the room. “Andrzej on theline – he’s under the impression he has a bail hearing on Friday.” Andrzej is one of Giles’sclients, who spent 30 months in prison for attempted robbery and was then served witha deportation order. While he challenged the order, he was being held at Campsfielddetention centre.

Andrzej had arrived from Poland lawfully, with his wife and two – then three – childrenand had worked here lawfully. After his arrest, the family was moved into sharedemergency social services accommodation, where his daughter was abused by anotherresident. Giles was challenging the decision to deport on the basis that Andrzej’s childrenwere vulnerable and could not do without their father’s support, and his deportation hadbeen deferred until the judicial review could be considered. But in order to be releasedfrom detention, Andrzej had to have a home address, at which point he ran into one ofmany kinks in the system.

The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) organises accommodation for asylumseekers and those applying for bail from an immigration detention centre, but becausethe pool is limited, Giles explained, it takes a very long time to process applications. Forforeign nationals who have been to prison, it can take even longer. There is often littlecommunication with the probation service, so when NASS does eventually suggest apossible address, it often ends up being rejected by probation because it is in a highcrime area, or in a house occupied by other ex-offenders, or otherwise deemed



unsuitable. “And that scenario can repeat itself two, three, four times over months, if notyears, during which time that person remains detained,” said Giles.

Soon enough, Andrzej called directly. Giles tried to calm him, to explain that no, therewas no bail hearing; yes, he had tried social services, intending to persuade them tosupport the argument against deportation, but they wouldn’t respond. “So what I wouldrecommend is you send them a letter saying, ‘I want to be with my wife and children, Iwant to know what I can do. I want to understand what is going on, please can youprovide a response urgently.’” He spelled it out. “U-R-G-E-N-T-L-Y.”

Giles speaks to all his clients in the same way, focused and supportive, but withoutflummery, or much softening of blows. Both Giles and Renshaw were clear that it wouldbe wrong to give false encouragement. “These people are very vulnerable andmarginalised,” said Renshaw. “They often have little idea of their rights. They are full ofhope, a lot of the time, that everything can be worked out. That’s a lethal combination –they’re ripe for people to tell them what they want to hear, and relieve them of a lot ofmoney for doing it.”

If Giles took a case on, he was very committed, Renshaw said. “Very smart, very forceful.You have to be – the Home Office is very combative. Most of us deal with them at arm’slength. But he has to talk to caseworkers, to people making decisions about detentionand tagging – it would grind down anyone who’s not as tough as he is.”

As would the unhappiness immigration lawyers encounter nearly every day. MaryBosworth, a professor of criminology at Oxford University, spent 18 months studyingcentres such as Campsfield, where people are detained for anything from a few days toyears, generally with no idea of how long it will be. In her harrowing book, InsideImmigration Detention, she described visiting the legal aid corridor where Giles sees hisclients just before renovations in 2013-14. The “stench … of sweat, fear and anxiety –was often overwhelming”, wrote Bosworth. The accommodation blocks were “standardprison wings, complete with suicide netting, metal doors, metal staircases, showerblocks with half-size doors enabling staff to see who is within.” Staff warned Bosworthnot to believe men who wept because their children had been put into care. Shedescribed levels of distress so difficult to witness that “on a number of occasions I leftthe centre abruptly, having reached the limits of my capacity to soak up other people’smisery”.

I asked Giles how he coped with the human misery he encounters daily. “I think, overthe years,” said Giles, “I have managed by not taking it on. Not engaging with theunderlying – facts, if you like. The things that have happened to somebody, or mayhappen to somebody. I’ve tried to concentrate instead on what I’m doing – what my roleis. I’d much rather my client said, ‘Tom has explained to me he’s going to do this, that ithas this chance of success,’ than, ‘He’s a good guy and he’s always got time to chat.’ Youknow?”

Giles called another client. Peter arrived from Nigeria in the late 1980s and was givenindefinite leave to remain – that is, permission to settle in Britain. He had four children,all British citizens. Fourteen years ago, when they were small, he was arrested forattempting to import class-A drugs; he turned informant and served a criminal sentence.Had Peter been a British citizen, he would have been allowed to go free after having



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served his time. But, because he was foreign, he was then detained while it was decidedwhether he would be deported. This detention lasted a further three years. Gileschallenged the legitimacy of these three years of incarceration. The courts found inPeter’s favour, and moreover ruled two years of the detention to be unlawful. He wasawarded damages. (Between 2011 and 2014, the Home Office paid out £15m incompensation for unlawful detention.)

The Home Office was not able to deport Peter. But it responded by giving him only sixmonths’ leave to remain. He was technically allowed to work, but in practice this wasnear-impossible. Ever since, he has had to reapply to stay every six months, at the cost ofa £649 fee to the Home Office and a payment to Turpin Miller each time.

Last month, the fees rose by 25%, to £811 per person. For most visa applicants, this isnow added to the new NHS surcharge of £200 for each adult and child, per year.Application for a standard two-and-a-half years’ leave to remain for a family of four nowcosts £5,244. Those who cannot find the money must leave the country when theircurrent visa expires, unless they can claim they are destitute — the bar for proving whichis extremely high. Fees are also waived for victims of domestic abuse – but only if thespouse is British. Often, Renshaw said, clients who had scrimped and saved their fees inthe full trust that they were doing what the system required of them did not find outabout rate rises until the last minute, meaning that they either had to leave the countryimmediately or become overstayers, and thus illegal. She is increasingly defendingpeople who have effectively been administrated into illegality. (A Home officespokesperson, approached for comment, stated that “It is only right we recover the costsof running our immigration system by making sure that those who benefit directly fromit contribute appropriately - so the expense to the UK taxpayer is less.”)

With no steady work, Peter was in such arrears that his credit card had been stopped andhis bank account closed. Giles was applying for legal aid so that Peter could pay TurpinMiller to appeal on his behalf to remain in Britain for three clear years at least; the legalaid agency wanted proof of income, but having no bank account, Peter was finding itdifficult to satisfy them. “The upshot is a form of terrorism,” said Giles. “We’re not justgoing to set up a system that makes it difficult for you to obtain the right to be here, we’regoing to carry that message through every part of your life, remind you of it every day.”

Some weeks later Giles received an email from Peter, saying that he wouldn’t be able tosend over his financial documents as requested, because he had destroyed them. “Istrongly believe that the legal aid office works with the immigration department and Ihave come to the conclusion that any document submitted to them would be used asevidence against me in a charge of illegal employment. At home I do not open my door orblind as I worry that the authorities are watching and are coming for me. Please do not beoffended that I am unable to provide the documents. Thank you sir.”

iles, who is now 40, grew up in Stoke Newington, north London. Hisparents split up when he was small, and he and his brother were raised byhis mother, who for 14 years was principal of Tower Hamlets College, andher new partner. It was a politically engaged household. They argued aboutissues at mealtimes and he was taken on marches against Thatcher and thenuclear bomb. There was a strong feeling, he says, “not too dissimilar to



Gnow, of a need to stand up against prejudice and discrimination”.

He thought about becoming a teacher before taking a conversion course and going intolegal aid. “It’s a cliche, isn’t it – growing up in a lesbian household in the 80s, in StokeNewington – what are you going to do? Join Ukip and end up an estate agent?” As a shychild who nevertheless “would not give a point up”, he could not imagine undertakingthe public performances required of a barrister, and so trained as a solicitor. He came toOxford because his wife had got a job at the council, and he admits he “stalked” PhilipTurpin, one of the firm’s partners, until he was hired.

Turpin Miller is effective and well-respected, and in 2012, at the Legal Aid Lawyer of theYear awards, it was named firm of the year. But less than a year later, legal aid was cutand the company lost about 70% of its legal aid work in immigration alone. In order tosurvive – and to fund flexible rates for clients who had previously qualified for aid – thefirm switched to more private work, where the client, rather than the government, paysfor representation.

Clients come to Turpin Miller through social services, children’s societies, women’srefuges or, for Giles, through detention centres and prisons. Though they have done aswell as they can under the circumstances – Renshaw recently won legal aid lawyer of theyear in the social and welfare category – the partners are acutely aware of how precarioustheir working lives, and by extension the lives of their clients, have become.

Last summer, in his first speech as secretary of state for justice, Michael Gove suggestedpro bono work should begin to replace legal aid, asking solicitors and barristers “to lookinto their consciences and see what they can do to ensure there is more equitable accessto justice”, and effectively suggesting that individual charity compensate for shortfalls instate funding. Giles was withering about this, pointing out that legal firms rich enough tohave pro bono units tend not to deal with asylum and immigration. “Immigration ishighly complicated work and any solicitor who does not specialise in it would probablybe breaching professional rules to be undertaking it pro bono,” says Richard Miller, headof legal aid at the Law Society. “One of the rules is that no solicitor must do any work forwith they’re not competent.”“We’re struggling to survive,” said Giles. “Every time we doa piece of work that doesn’t pay it is no exaggeration to say we’re jeopardising ourfuture.”

When it cut legal aid, the government promised a safety net for those in danger of abreach of their human rights in the form of “exceptional case funding”. “You can applydirectly [to the Legal Aid Agency],” it says, helpfully, on gov.uk. “You don’t have to namea solicitor.” The trouble is that the forms are 14 pages long, and include questions like:“Please describe why you consider there is an arguable breach of substantive obligation”.It can take an experienced lawyer up to six hours to do one application; if it isunsuccessful they do not get paid. It is possible to send a letter explaining why youcannot represent yourself, but to construct a strong argument, it would probably help tohave a passing knowledge of case law.

In May 2013 Giles applied for exceptional case funding to represent a Lithuanianwoman, Teresa Gudanaviciene. She was working lawfully in the UK when she woundedher violent, alcoholic partner with a knife, and received an 18-month prison sentence.Her younger child was taken into care (the older one was an adult), and she was



informed that at the end of her sentence she would be deported. Giles believed she couldappeal against the decision on human rights grounds. He duly applied for exceptionalcase funding, and was rejected. He challenged the decision and eventually, in 2014,along with five other linked cases, the case reached the court of appeal, which found thatthe bar for legal aid provision was set unlawfully high. Gudanaviciene was given legal aidand her appeal against deportation was successful.

“That was really important,” said Renshaw. In 2013-14, before Gudanaviciene’s victory,1,520 applications for exceptional case funding were made, 69% of which were forfamily or immigration cases: 69 – or 4.5% – were granted, of which only one or two wereimmigration cases. However, in the first quarter of 2015, following Gudanaviciene’svictory, 132 applications were made for exceptional funding for immigration cases, and51 were granted. “And this is the thing about Tom,” Renshaw told me. “A lot of us tookone look at the forms and thought, ‘I don’t have time to do that for nothing!’ But Tombattled away – applying, reapplying and in the end taking them to court. That’s what hedoes; if he sees an issue that needs to be dealt with he will keep going.”

It is an obvious point, but worth repeating: legal aid is necessary because it aims to giveeveryone equal access to justice. “Legal aid ensured that for a relatively low cost thewhole system worked,” said Renshaw, “and that is particularly true in Tom’s work”. But,she argues, if you get rid of the ability to put a case at all, because a client cannot pay tofight it, you skew the system. And if you then remove people from the UK before theycan appeal a Home Office decision – well, “the whole point of an appeal is to call peopleto account. The first decision isn’t always right. And what happens when you underminethat right of appeal – either by removing legal aid or by requiring people to conduct theirappeal from overseas – is that the quality of the first decision deteriorates, becausethere’s no scrutiny.”

The other issue illustrated by the Gudanaviciene case was the lengths to which thegovernment would go to prove a point. If legal aid had been provided, and a barristerhired for her initial appeal, the whole thing would have cost £691. But because thegovernment refused her legal aid, and kept refusing even though the challenge movedthrough to the high court and then the court of appeal, the case eventually involved 18barristers, at a cost in excess of £600,000, not to mention an extra six months ofdetention for Gudanaviciene (at a cost, according to figures entered into parliamentarydebate in late 2014, of £97 per day) and maintaining a child in care (between £131,000and £135,000 per child per year, according to the National Audit Office).

“At the hearing, the presenting officer said they were ready to concede,” said Giles, “butthey could not get permission to concede, because, I suspect, the Home Office does notconcede deportation cases. It is the Home Office that is dragging these things throughthe courts, with the costs to the public purse and [the emotional] cost to everyone.Discretion and common sense seem to have been taken out of the system.”

Giles’s suspicions were bolstered in mid-November, when the president of the uppertribunal, which considers appeals relating to asylum and immigration, published adecision saying that he had “the impression that the secretary of state [for the HomeOffice], as a matter of routine, applies for permission to appeal in every deportationappeal [resolved in favour of the appellant]”. Furthermore, he noted, the terms in whichthese Home Office applications were made were frequently generic, rather than engaging



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with the facts of the individual case and with the law, and that they were inundatingtribunals and threatening to impede legitimate work. “If there is indeed a practice of thiskind it must be disapproved,” he wrote. “To slavishly apply for permission to appeal tothe upper tribunal in every deportation appeal resolved in favour of the appellant, if thisbe the practice, is not a proper or legitimate invocation of this tribunal’s jurisdiction.” (Inresponse, a Home Office spokesperson told me that “any decision to appeal a judgmentmade by the courts is taken after careful consideration of the facts and when it is in thepublic interest to do so”.)

hen, during prime Minister’s Questions in January, David Cameronreferred to a “bunch of migrants”, or when he pledged, last summer,to halt the “swarm” attempting to make the crossing from Calais, hislanguage was nothing new. Britain has been worrying about outsidersfor a long time, while in fact, as Robert Winder has argued in hismagisterial book Bloody Foreigners, rather impressively muddling

along and largely accepting them.

But in the last couple of decades, it has become, for non-EU migrants, harder and harderto arrive and, having arrived, to stay. The world has changed, radically: cheaperinternational travel, digital communications, international terrorism and refugees fleeingwars have presented challenges previous governments have not had to face, or at leastnot on such a scale. Yet this does not excuse tactics that have paved the way forincreasingly harsh policies.

“Britain has expended considerable effort over the past decade in marking out (some)foreign nationals as dangerous, unwelcome, and excludable,” writes Mary Bosworth.“Eliding different categories of foreigner, starting with the ‘bogus asylum seeker’, beforemoving to the terrorist and the foreign offender, various British governments have pittedthese rhetorical figures against the British citizen, shoring up a narrative of nationalidentity in a period of mass mobility.”

This process has accelerated in recent years, and it is increasingly possible, especiallysince the Tories achieved their majority, to detect what looks like a three-step process.Step 1: talk as tough as possible about migrants. Step 2: write legislation that is tough onmigrants. Step 3: when it is challenged, claim that it is simply what the public wants. Andin the meantime use every possible administrative and judicial muscle to removemigrants from the UK.

By the time Theresa May addressed the Conservative party conference last October, shefelt comfortable claiming that the asylum system was so open to abuse that “it was justanother way of getting here to work” – which meant it was “impossible to build acohesive society … wages are forced down even further while some people are forced outof work altogether”.

In making this claim, May was undeterred by the fact that her own department’sresearch has found no “statistically significant displacement of UK natives from thelabour market in periods when the economy is strong”.

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jun/10/bloody-foreigners-robert-winder-updated



One morning in late September, the main hall of the Royal Courts of Justicein London echoed with the crash of security belts as bags were searched atthe entrance. At the centre, gazed down upon by portraits of men inermine and wigs, were the cause lists, detailing the cases to be heard thatday. Nearby was a stand on which was pasted a copy of the Magna Carta. Itlooked like a colour photocopy someone had taken in a rush, and

completed a very English impression of beauty, vaulting power, and lashings ofamateurishness.

In Court 68, appeals were being heard from lawyers for two offenders, CourtneyByndloss, a Jamaican national, and Kevin Kiarie, a Kenyan. Both were challengingdecisions to deport them before they could appeal from within the UK. Kiarie, whoseparents have indefinite leave to remain, and who has lived in England for 19 of his 23years, was Giles’s client. Everyone in the small windowless court was aware of theimportance of this case: if the two men were successful, the government’s policy of“deport first, appeal later” would be dealt a major blow, and many thousands ofmigrants, both offenders and the far greater number of non-offenders, would benefit.

The court of appeal is different to what courtroom dramas on TV lead one to expect.There is almost no concession to lay observers, theoretically welcome though they mightbe. Everyone is already familiar with the bare bones of the case, so bewigged barristersplunge directly into the finer points of case law. Behind them junior counsel, also inwigs, flap through thick folders, looking for page references and omissions. Behind thejunior counsel sit a row of solicitors who, that morning, included Giles, whose brightblue shirt stood out against all the black suits and gowns. And at the front of the room sitthe judges, who do not wear wigs. Far from being impassive adjudicators, the judges getstuck in, running proceedings in a tough and not always polite manner.

Richard Drabble QC, who has a slight stoop, a lovely smile and a tendency to mumble,argued for Kiarie: how could he appeal against deportation while in Kenya – a country hedid not know – without access to British lawyers, witnesses, or supporting material suchas probation records, or medical records? A mention of psychiatric papers caused a flurryof scorn from Lord Justices Richards, McCombe, who made full use of impressive salt-and-pepper eyebrows, and Elias, sceptical, old and tiny, almost Dickensian in his high-backed chair. Manjit Gill QC’s argument about the rights of Byndloss’s children produceda splutter of impatience from Richards: “If you have a speaking note, let’s get on with it!”

The atmosphere changed abruptly when Richard Keen, Baron Keen of Elie, former chairof the Scottish Conservative party, stood to speak. Keen, who is the advocate general forScotland, had intervened at the last minute to argue for the home secretary. “What isbeing reviewed?” began Keen, who is a big man, sleek with confidence. “A decision ofthe secretary of state.” He took immediate and direct aim at the characters of Kiarie andhis co-defendant, using the phrase “foreign national criminal” as often as possible. “Bothhave shown a disregard for the law of the UK, and therefore there is a public interest inremoving them from the UK, and therefore policy reflects that public interest … and ifthat means removing them pending their appeal then so be it. That is the view ofparliament.”

There was more of the same the next day when Keen, wearing a pink and white checkedshirt under his QC’s silks, pointed out that some immigration appeals do already occur



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out of country, and if necessary an appellant can always be brought back to defend himor herself. (Although, as Baroness Helena Kennedy QC has pointed out during debatesabout the immigration bill, “only 13% of out-of-country appeals succeed, compared toan average of around four in 10 made in country”.) Keen moved the appeals be refused.

In response, Drabble, whose mumble had completely disappeared, took direct aim at thelikelihood of anyone ever being brought back, and at the general breakdown of dueprocess. “You can’t proceed on the basis that the tribunal will somehow muddle through.That’s not an acceptable way to run a procedurally fair system.” Furthermore, “It is amajor mistake of principle to allow the gravity of what is alleged against my client … todiminish procedural protection. That cannot be the right approach.”

Three weeks later, unusually swiftly where these things are concerned, Richards,McCombe and Elias found against Kiarie and Byndloss, arguing that it was perfectlypossible to continue their appeals from abroad.

Renshaw thinks that judges are increasingly being forced into a corner by a homesecretary intent on incorporating a “really hostile environment for illegal immigrants”(May’s own words) into legislation, meaning, as Renshaw put it, that “the judiciary insome ways have little choice – they are simply implementing the law.”

There has been some pushback from the House of Lords. In their debates, manylordsmade clear their discomfort with the speed at which a constantly changing bill was beingpushed through the government alone has made more than 300 amendments, on top ofamendments proposed and voted on by lords and MPs. They also criticised what theysaw as unnecessary hardships being visited on migrants. They voted, among otherthings, to allow asylum seekers to work if their claims had not been processed within sixmonths – currently asylum seekers live on £5 a day, and when they can finally work, thejobs they are allowed to do are severely restricted – and to require a court order to detainanyone for more than 28 days.

n early March, Giles’s client Andrzej won his appeal against deportation, but hehad already been removed – a situation that will arise more and more when the“deport first, appeal later” measure in the immigration bill comes into generaleffect.

Peter, meanwhile, was granted legal aid — but the court of appeal refused hisrequest for an extension of his visa. “It’s a bad ending,” said Giles, then corrected

himself. “It’s definitely not an ending. We need to start again and challenge it again. Ihope he can be strong enough to go through it all again.”

It is not an ending for Kiarie either, at least not yet: as soon as the court of appealdecision came through last autumn Giles applied for legal aid so that he could take thecase further. This was granted, and the appeal should come before the supreme court atsome point later this year.

Even Teresa Gudanaviciene had been forced to go another round with the Home Office.Having been given exceptional case funding, she and Giles fought the decision to deporther, and won their case in the first-tier tribunal. The Home Office refused to accept thisdecision and challenged it in the upper tribunal – which decided that there had in fact



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been no error of law and that she could stay. “I spoke to her yesterday,” said Giles, whenhe told me about it. What did she say? “She just said, ‘I don’t know what to say. Thankyou.’”

Some names have been changed

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• This article was amended on 14 April 2016. An earlier version referred to BorisJohnson’s “Henley fiefdom”.

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The lawyer who takes the cases no one wants by Aida Edemaria - The Guardian .pdf

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Transcript of The lawyer who takes the cases no one wants by Aida Edemaria - The Guardian .pdf