“I Was About to Be Deported From the UK, But I Fought for My Right to Stay and Won After Giving My Reasons That Even the Judge Understood” — 47-Year-Old Jamaican Man Celebrates

A 47-year-old Jamaican man who has spent more than half of his life living in the UK has been given the chance to return to his British family after lawyers challenged his planned deportation.

Mark Nelson first came to the UK in 2000. Over the years, he built a life in Britain, started his own car-mechanic business and had five children who are British citizens. He also has a British partner, Rachel Derbyshire, and lives with her in the north of England.

However, Nelson faced deportation after being sentenced to four years in prison in connection with several offences, including possession of a Class B drug with intent to supply, abstracting electricity and two offences involving racially aggravated intentional harassment.

He completed his prison sentence and, according to the report, had not committed any further offences. His deportation was later cancelled, but he was required to wear a tag and report to a Home Office centre every week.

Then, last month, the situation suddenly changed. Nearly a decade after his original conviction, Nelson was arrested again, taken into immigration detention and told that the government intended to deport him to Jamaica.

The Home Office had even arranged a flight for him on 7 August. Nelson feared that he would soon be separated from his partner and children and sent to a country where he said he no longer had close family.

His situation changed after lawyers read about his case in the Guardian and offered to represent him without charging him. They made an urgent application for a judicial review, challenging the decision to deport him.

Following the legal challenge, the Home Office withdrew the deportation and cancelled his flight. Nelson was later granted bail, allowing him to leave immigration detention and return to his family.

Nelson said he was extremely happy to finally leave the detention centre near Heathrow, where he had spent several weeks. He described the conditions as hot and overcrowded and said his family were extremely excited when they heard he had been released.

He said that if the lawyers had not contacted him after reading about his case, he believed he would already have been sent back to Jamaica and separated from the people closest to him.

Nelson has also said that he has very little connection to Jamaica now. He explained that the relatives who raised him there had died when he was 16, leaving him with no close family members in the country.

His lawyer, Naga Kandiah of MTC Solicitors, has also submitted an appeal concerning Nelson’s immigration case. A referral has additionally been made to the National Referral Mechanism because he may be considered a potential victim of modern slavery.

Kandiah argued that Nelson had already served his prison sentence for the offences he committed in 2017. He said it was unfair for the threat of deportation to continue hanging over Nelson many years later, particularly because deportation could permanently separate him from his British children and partner.

The lawyer also raised concerns about people who struggle to find legal help when facing removal from the UK. He said that without timely legal advice, there is a risk that someone could be removed from the country before all the details of their case have been properly examined.

Nelson had previously written about his fear of deportation in 2022. At the time, he explained that Jamaica no longer felt like home because he had spent most of his adult life in Britain and no longer knew many people there.

The Home Office said foreign national offenders who receive a prison sentence in the UK are referred for deportation as early as possible. It also said that almost 70,000 people who were in the UK illegally had been removed or deported since the last election, representing an increase of 41%.

For now, Nelson has been allowed to leave detention and return to his family while his immigration case continues. His legal challenge means that, rather than being placed on a flight to Jamaica, he can once again be with his partner and children while the next stage of his case is considered.