Just weeks after adopting the controversial sentence, which allows refugees who have entered British soil illegally to be deported to the African country, Judge Michael Humphreys ruled that entire sections of the law should be “struck down” before being applied to Northern Ireland. In the name of human rights protection. “This judgment sends a clear message to the British government […] “Asylum seekers are not only welcome in Northern Ireland, but they are protected by the law,” Sinead Marmion, the lawyer for the 16-year-old Iranian refugee, said in a statement that partly sparked the appeal. According to them, the decision poses a “major obstacle” to the enforcement of anti-immigration laws in Northern Ireland.

“This judgment sends a clear message to the British government […] Asylum seekers are not only welcome in Northern Ireland, they are protected under the law.

Conflict between London and the two Irelands

Northern Irish justice – which operates independently of the English judicial system – was particularly mentioned in the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which ended three decades of bloody fighting over British sovereignty in 1998. The judge considered several provisions in the text to undermine the rights of asylum seekers, as guaranteed by the peace accord and the recently signed legal texts to protect it. They also violate rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the United Kingdom is a signatory, he said.

Gavin Robinson, the interim leader of the unionist DUP party, which is committed to keeping Northern Ireland within the UK, expressed concern after the decision that the region would become a “magnet” for refugees if anti-immigration laws did not apply there.